to ensure these stories liketo y family is live on it will take many passionate voices. mine will be one. there'll be others. the legacy is an inherited one for me, for rebekah it is a chosen one. she was actively involved in one of the museum programs for high school students and then as a high school english teacher herself she taught the holocaust to her students. today she's a member of the museum staff, bringing holocaust education to young people throughout the country and world. please welcome rebecca. [applause] >> i like to share a poem i

wrote for this location. aam not the likely voice of holocaust survivor. i presume that there are more likely torchbearers in the room. one might assume a black woman may not relate to this history. wrong is wrong. in justice speaks values the matter what side of the line you are on. weemember as a student learned about the holocaust and what appeared to be one day. i was unable to walk away. i saw how little my textbook had to say. speak years i resolve to out against the evils of this world. in speaking for one i can speak for all. i learned that the evils of this world never sleep. i am provide a martin luther king's dream.

i committed to this history with my own students. i make sure they get more than just one day. i give them the lesson of a lifetime. this story is mine. there is no such thing as a likely voice. i must bear witness that silence can never be my choice. thank you. [applause] >> thank you. lisa and i are here to live the

lessons of resilience and compassion that we learned from holocaust survivors that are here today. >> i will not be here today if it wasn't for the bravery and sacrifice of world war ii veterans who fought so valiantly to liberate europe and a defeat fascism around the world. i invite all of you to join rebeca antony in pledging that we will carry their stories into the future. has symbol, the museum created this for you. pinsignificance of these is not only to acknowledge what these individuals have been stored, it is also about what we reached and must do for you our future.

president bill clinton will now have the honor of presenting our first 20 the anniversary pin to world war two veteran scottie, a member of the 84th infantry division that liberated hanover, holland. [applause] rebecca will present elie wiesel with his pin.

[applause] >> earlier today all of our survivors, veterans, and rescuers received their pins from washington area students. will the survivors with us in the audience please stand to be recognized?

[applause] thank you. please be seated. now all of the veterans please stand. [applause]

thank you. please be seated. on behalf of all of us here today, we pledged to never forget and that we will carry your stories into the future. thank you. [applause] >> please welcome elie wiesel, founding chairman of the united states holocaust memorial museum. [applause] >> president clinton, my fellow survivors, and all of you who

were here, in truth having witnessed the solidarity of people who went through the worst of human imagination we have heard voices that are appeals to hope and generosity in our lives. that is the message. it is important. we believe it. it is an indictment. oferrible indictment leadership in those years. it is very hard for me to name names, but i must tell you in all sincerity that in my little town somewhere in the mountains, this name was better

known than the names of our own heroes. why? we were convinced that he was a father figure, a carrier of noble ideals to galvanize generations for democracy. and let america and its might to war against evil. after the war, researching history sources to realize that even roosevelt had some shortcomings when it came to face, jews.

we must say that. here we are committed to the painful truth. he was a great man. he did great things for america in the world. but when it came to saving jewish lives he could have done it earlier. my dear friends, you are worthy. he cannot not say what is in our heart. there is a certain measure of sadness. what are we learning here? this is dedicated to human rights and human dignity. it is written in stone.

doserby's interest here but not enter displays of desire. a this museum, which is monument to human suffering and courage to overcome suffering, do not enter this place with out fear. fear of failing for such a long time to save those who are threatened by common enemies. at the same time, later these very nations and leaders did stand-up to the moral obligations to fight evil with all the weapons at our disposal.

between these two temptations is what humanity is when it tries to overcome all the disappointments in life and only claim to be best, the noblest of the human spirit and dedication to memories and truth. [applause] what do we say to young people? you are our witnesses. you will go beyond our lives. you are our hope. whatever we do now is not only for the sake of the past but also for the sake of the future. you are our future. we believe there for that

whatever witnesses are trying to say, it the best and saddest, you're the flag bearers. it is your memory that inherits ours. armey believes in yours. remember that. you have not only an idea but an ideal a saving whatever the has to offer for the future. what have we learned? when we planned this museum, we thought who will we remember, only the jews?

not all victims were jews but all the jews were victims. we came with all ideas of what to do with our memory, but not to separate people. it would be false if we told our story to separate people people or religion from religion. we believe opening up of the gate of our memory we are bringing people closer together and showing what an individual can do. those who saved the lives, all these christians to saved lives while risking their own, every one of them is a hero.

[applause] i also remember it that once [inaudible] they organized a group for the liberators. we brought liberators from all over the world. i spoke to them. havere now the first to seen us. you were the first free men and women who have seen us. you be our witnesses. i was going to one to another. tell me what gave you the courage to resist? what gave you the courage to become a hero? all of them answer me, we

heroes? if my neighbor was in danger, how could i not offer him a place in my cellar for attic? i said to myself, in those times it was enough to be human to become a hero. my good friends, we are trying to honor not to make heroes but to make the visitor a messenger. president clinton 20 years ago here in this place, it was raining. he was soaked.

our shoes were in water. i saw them, yours and mine. i remember then that i came to speak. we had worked on my speech the entire night, literally. then i opened my folder, if ever i was close to a heart attack it was then, it was soaked. i couldn't decipher the words. had i tried to remember what i said it would have been a disaster. so i had to improvise a new one. that is when i turned to you, mr. president, and i spoke to you about yugoslavia. i had just come back from there. what we must do in the name of

our memory, what we must do to help those people from becoming victims of one another. i remember you promised america will do and then you're kind enough to send me an emissary to yugoslavia. that will not be forgotten by my wife or myself or my friends. at that moment, you and i became friends. as you note to me, friendship to me is a religion. noblewith the less without any danger. to have you here now 20 years later is more than a privilege. it is a gift.

[applause] it is a gift which any open is a gift. a great poet said it, "sometimes an open hand is a poem." it becomes a task. it becomes a mission. it is also a gift. pathetic, tragic, but so filled with grandeur that i want you to know, young people, that ever you will do what only

elevates you. it should give you a new meaning to your years. i wish she many years of discovery and of being a true your calling and worthy of the moment we are just living. thank you. [applause] >> please welcome president bill clinton.

>> thank you. first i would like to thank for her 20 years of stewardship to the museum. thank you. i would like to say special word of thanks to the two young women who spoke. they did two things. they reminded us that this museum has the power to inspire, motivate, and in power generation.

they have now said everything that needs to be said. they were terrific. let us give them another hand. i want to thank our world war ii veteran. i think it is impressive he can still fit in his uniform. [applause] to all the survivors who are here, veterans and those who helped, i thank you very much. i think elie so much for the friendship you have given to hillary any of the last 20 years. that friendship was shown what happened 20 years ago.

he talked about how president roosevelt was a great man but he did not do enough. he looked at me and said that i needed to get off my rear end and do something about bosnia. sooner was better than later. [applause] i always thought it was interesting that the world and not take enough note, that the drive with in america and also within europe to stop the slaughter of in bosnia and to later to prevent a genocide in kosovo was a drive led by jews to save the lives of european muslims.

that is very important. profoundhere are two missions for the holocaust museum and all those who do its work and preach its message on this 20th anniversary. the first is to make sure that as direct memories fade away, that the records and pictures and the stories never die, to make sure that we will always be able to come here to remind us that no matter how smart a people are, if you have a head with out a heart you are not human. to remind us of what happened

was so we can be vigilant about stopping it from happening again. we have all of these wonderful monuments here. the lincoln memorial. jefferson's memorial with his when slavery " trembled to think of god was just the "roosevelt memorial reminding us of his personal courage in favor -- in the face of his and diversity. .orld war two memorial the washington monument is a metaphor for the strength of washington. something to our country and to visitors from around the world who come here. holocaust memorial will be

our conscience and will be here as our conscience. now, forever. [applause] thinkis one other thing i -- arguablyrtant the most important scientific development in the last 20 years since we were last here was the sequencing of the human genome in 2000, which has now led to unbelievable developments in saving lives. we have only scratched the surface. say, with some humility, that it was most important because

out of the exciting things that have happened to our great telescopes just identified two more planets far outside our solar system, billions of light years away, that seemed to be enough like us that they could support life. outppose if we found somewhat -- found out sometime between now and the end of the ceremony that we are not alone in the universe i will have to revise my assessment. these two things, the exploration of outer space and the exploration of the innermost minute part of our own physical existence have taught us lessons that reinforce the importance of what has happened here for 20 years and must continue to happen here. we have learned a lot about our bodies. twoow know for young women

genetic variances that put the most at risk for breast cancer. if that is identified you can have a dramatic increase in the survival rate and even the prevention rate. they found a genetic variants between children who had superficially the exact same brainf breast cancer -- cancer so the medicine that was curing one would it saves them too. for all of us here today the most important finding of the human genome research is a simple one. non-age related difference you can see in this room and across the globe, every single

one, is contained in one-half of 1% of our genetic makeup. 99.5% the same, men and women, black and white, european and asian, tall and short. in that half of a percent are things that really matter. somewhere in there albert einstein had biggest brain and changed the world. of ahere in that half percent a deaf beethoven became a great composer. somewhere in that half of a percent a great athletic achievement was generated. everyone of us spends too much time on that half a percent. most of us spend 99% of their

time thinking about the half percent of us that is different from everyone else. to thekes us vulnerable fever and the sickness that the nazis gave to the germans. to think that all that matters to defineg you do others in your pursuit of money, and power, and influence -- that sickness is very alive all across the world today. pick a target, as long as they are not you is ok. to thatwhat led to getul pakistani girl shot, just because she wanted to

go to school. it threatened a group whose on no small measure on its ability to control women's lives. that is how that girl got raped and murdered in delhi. nobody wanted to do anything about it because she was less human. that is why a young woman in afghanistan the other day jumped off of her father's house because her ranged marriage to a man meant that he was going to force her to drop out of school when she wanted to become a doctor. she was first in her class. he thought she would be really harmed by the outside influences and if she could never go to school she could never leave the house. you see this virus taking different forms still all over the world? it is alive and well today.

the thing that led people for centuries to slaughtered jews, to contain choose, to drive chews out of their homelands where they were living, it is rooted in the idea that the only thing that matters was hour difference. jews were a handy target. their resented them for faith, industriousness, and there were never so many of them as there were somebody else. we all like to beat up on people whom we know the outcome uncertain. the outcome is certain. i ask you to recommit to replace the direct memories of those with thel with us records of this museum so that no one can ever forget these stories and these lessons. you to think about how the

sufferinglaughter and of the holocaust reflects a human disease that takes different forms. differencest our are more important than our common humanity. measure costs of heartbreak round the world, as the saw in boston at the marathon. and it is still the biggest threat to our children and grandchildren of wreaking havoc promise of an interdependent world. you know the truth. you have enshrined here. you must continue to work to give it to all humankind. nd god bless you. [applause]

>> please stand for the flag processional. ♪

>> thank you. this concludes our program. please remain in your seat until the speakers leave the state.

>> on the next "washington journal," we will look at president 0,'s second term -- president obama's second term. followed by an update on the situation in syria with jeffrey white. peter settled joins us. tweets,h your calls, and e-mails at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. the national rifle association held its annual meeting this weekend in houston tx. we will show you some of the featured speakers, including wayne lapierre, nra ceo. 8:35 eastern here on c-span.

the anti-defamation league hosted its centennial summit last week in washington. keynote speaker talked about counter-terrorism efforts, i ran bang pots nuclear program, and syria. this is half an hour. >> pan am flight 103, munich twin towers and the pentagon, a move by, tokyo subway, the london underground, the images of two terrorist attacks are seared in our minds and the mere mention of those words and those places fill us

with anger and sorrow. and now, unfortunately, boston gets added to that list. our hearts go out to the families and friends of those who were killed and our prayers for healing go to the wounded. boston is strong, indeed. this morninge knowing full well that no country, no city is immune from terrorist extremist attacks. the same can be said from the jewish community. adl staff works behind bulletproof glass and steel reinforced doors for a reason. we need to have the benefit of the best strategies and practices to prevent terrorist attacks. the state of israel is sadly -- sadly has had to do with more than its share of terrorism for decades. and so it is only natural that many policy-makers and law-

enforcement officials turn to israel and israeli officials for guidance, learning, and inspiration on this issue. to help us understand the trends of global terrorism and extremism and what the international community can and should be doing to counter it. we are privileged to have with us one of israel's leading military strategists. israel's director of former think-tank, televisa, us -- tel aviv's institute for security. he spent years in the israeli defense forces serving as the chief of defence intelligence. his 2011 appointment as -- ector of inss

he has written broadly on national security and spoken widely on counter-terrorism issues. when i was talking to him he said it all the credentials -- forget all of the credentials. he is the only person who has played a leading role in stopping two nuclear programs. plane the pilot in the that took up the nuclear reactor in the 1980's. he was the chief decision maker to take up the syrian program three or four years ago. those are pretty extraordinary credentials. [applause] please join me in welcoming major-general a mouse.

-- major general amos yadlin. >> good morning. i am happy to be with you this morning. i was asked to speak about the war on terror. i must it meant that last year when i addressed to on iran's nuclear issue i spoke about the only existential threat to israel, which is the combination f a very radical regime who [inaudible] when we speak about terror, i

want everybody to understand that as tough as terro is it is it istough as terrorist is not an existential threat, it is a strategic threat. let us go one decade ago and look at a memo that defense secretary sent to his leadership. he asks them if we are winning or losing. walked the faster we get behind. this is exactly the characteristic of the war on terror. you never eliminate the last terrorist. it is very much like car

accidents. how old you define winning or define-- how do you winning or losing? the best definition is whether affecting the strategic barometer that is important to your country. whether terror, by fear and intimidation, is able to change the course of economic wars. mothers andt fathers would not let their kids got into the street. if you take this definition for what we are winning or losing you will understand better where leastnd and we may say at in israel and also in the united

states we're winning. we are winning. it doesn't say that terror disappears. -- it is aiming to achieve the goal, a strategic goal, by fear and intimidation. let us check whether terror behavior,r strategic changed the way we are living, change our values or not. when a judge with a terror has changed its once again i say terror is not winning. i may go back to israel we foughtven though three campaigns against terror i

can sum up all of the three of them well. it is not the conventional wisdom but [indiscernible] we launched a campaign in 2000 to change the course of history, to change the way his release live -- the way israelis live. it was a long war. it took six years and the terror from the west bank was defeated. both the capability of the palestinians from the west bank and their intentions, such a victory is rare.

we're able to basically arrest or kill most of the terrorists. we were able to stop them. thepalestinians understood to ever play against them. not the sameas decisiveness. we have not ruled out the capabilities. if they decide tonight to launch a terror campaign against israel they can do it. somethinge able to do that in the textbook of political science nobody says deterossible -- to

criminal organizations. deterred.is in seven years they have not fired one bullet towards israel. organization,or they used to attack every month. with killingy syrian civilians. story.s the same this is to say that everybody in -- everybody to in the last decade -- everybody, who in the last decade, told us we could not win the war on terror was wrong.

-- a security fence, and some political steps that will take the motivation down. ,he concept of hearts and mind which hardly work the saudi a very extreme -- which hardly works vis-a-vis -- palestinian terrorists. we have al qaeda. none of them are the same. one should learn and study what -- of movement

each one of them is different. basically hard to change their mind about their strategic goal. and there she did good goal is to eliminate israel. the strategic goal is to change the course of history. they look at the western world, .he christian-jewish values they think this story should be changed. they think history is going up with them and we are going down because we are spoiled and not willing to sacrifice anymore,

because we are not moral. this is not propaganda. this is the real thinking of the terrorists. the concept of winning the hardly work.nds first of all you have to stop the capabilities and then reserve motivation. in the short while i think the fact that since september 11 al qaeda was unable to attack and to your needs to escalate all the time. if they kill 3000 americans the only real achievement for them .s not an attack it is an extravagant event. they were unable to change the

american way of life. they were on able -- they were unable to change the strategic goal of america. they are not winning. have to look at the very long one. there is a learning competition. do not underestimate the terrorists. they're smart. ourselves,udying your society, our society. to unconventional measures. they are using the web in an impressive way. when you see them looking for

places where they can build their base, which are basically failed countries like ,fghanistan, pakistan, molly this is- mali, syria, where they create their base. developed a very good system to follow them. this is not the case before september 11. the diligence today is much better. count up 100% diligence. sooner or later something will snake out. we have to be on guard, continuing to collect diligence, continuing to target whoever we see that needs to be targeted. is real victory over terror

that we will continue our life even if there are a very tragic events like the event in boston. let them close the main city in the north east for a couple of days. to not let the close of tel aviv or tourism. continue with our life, continue with our building of some are -- continue with our building of our societies. the arab spring gave the opportunity to rebuild their forces. targeted alen was qaeda was in a tough position. he was not the only one that the

wouldgeneration muslims look at. gave the youngg generation another direction. towas much more attractive the secularists. the square about freedom, democracy, human dignity -- this was much more attractive than jihad. the arab world is going through another season. the arab spring, in the short time, gave al qaeda a lot of opportunity -- weapons from all over the place.

libya is a big warehouse that now spreads all over the middle east. -- a lot of money, a lot of weapons, a lot of shelters to build their basis. -- to build their bases. the people of tutt career will come back. this is a phenomenon cannot put back. can see howneration other generations -- how other nations are living. they know what is going on. this struggle of idea in the atb world should be looked very well. i think in the long run al qaeda is going down.

how we continue to deal with terror -- i already spoke about intelligence. cyber is a new reality. we have to develop means to deal with the terrorists on the cyber-dimension, dealing with their propaganda. during the operation activities that can be done. drones is another way of dealing with terror. argument ofuge whether drugs are ethical or are -- of whether drones ethical or not. the ethical issue is not the platform. the ethical issue is what are the rules of engagement?

who decides whether the target should be -- should terrorists be targeted or not? those of the rules of engagement. with this cyber and drone, you are not winning the war on terror. at the end of the day you need to send the seals to do the job. sometimes you need very good soldiers. thank who everyone to think that israel and america have really good warriors. cyber, drones, are not in the job. we have the special forces that can do it. i want to finish my opening to speak a little bit .bout syria

if you combine terrorism with weapons of mass destruction this can be an existence of a threat. -- can be an existential threat. i want to downplay the chemical weapon. 18,000 syrianst killed. not with chemical weapons. conventional, traditional weapons -- bullets, rockets. the chemical weapon is very proficient. -- is very inefficient. it was used in history only against people who cannot defend themselves. it was used by the germans against the bricks until the brits developed chemical weapons.

at that moment it stopped. it was not used in world war fight -- allall the sides fought with chemical weapons. was used by the egyptian leader in the '60s. currentsed by the recused but some hussein -- it was used by saddam hussein in the '80s. it is efficient only if you spray it. -- if he sprayed from airplanes. i do not see al qaeda having airplanes. the israeli air force can deal with it quite efficiently. if you load it onto a missile and the missile is going and a very high speed --

you need sophisticated fuels i do not see the terrorists possessing. chemical weapons should be downplayed. 80,000 innocent syrian people is an issue that i think this audience should deal with. it was to prevent genocide. there were two events in rwanda and bosnia that the lawyers argue whether it is a genocide or not. it is not 100 sermon genocide.

this is speaking about internal conflict that people are dealing in masses. even though it is an internal problem, and the international community should do something about it. it doesn't matter whether their kids with bullets are chemical weapons. it is the same. -- or chemical weapons. it is the same. they're not standing up to their duty. we are all under the drama of iraq 2003. actioneople rest to an that was not -- rush to an action that was not necessary. you can do the same with inaction.

unfortunately, this is happening with the action. do not think for a moment that we're recommending another in boot on the ground. you can really change the perception of others. you can do everything. this can be done by a safe haven. it without even the syrian operation. what are the consequences? a good the conference is day to speak about it.

i will stop here and will be very happy to take questions. >> can you address the non- conventional effect against iraq? if you remember last year i said there are five strategies to stop iran. sanctionss, it tough shadows, regime change, and military intervention. the question is on the covert

operation. nobody took responsibility. the good news is that if you the nuclear infrastructure and a lot of folks like 60,000 center folks should be in the summer of is they wered news unable to reach this number. they have only 12,000 centers. this is the bad news. they achieved a remarkable achievement. unfortunately, it is not stopping. a continues to go forward.

which is as fast as possible. they are going in a slow pace. very wise.redundant, they are in the threshold. ingredients that a supreme leader has. doing it?ey not it will take him between four- but heths, four-months are out of the range. -- if you're out to the range of the missile summer in virginia. the supreme leader

not safe enough. for-six months will give an of time to those who want to stop iran to detect what they are doing, to make the decision which is the hardest part, and to launch an operation. they want to be in the threshold with so much , a lot of, thousands material, and be able to break out in a month. twoeen 2 and sections -- inspections. they are not there yet. tot is why they continue come to the engagement but not the green to anything that will

stop the problem. if they continue with the same pace, we're going to face the capability to break out in a very short time. >> more now on counter-terrorism from this year's anti-defamation league. -- anti-defamation summit. this is just over one hour. >> good morning everyone. my involvement with adl dates

back to the early 1980s, when i was exposed to the leak and its for me, adl's appeal has been twofold. they are a group of quality our jewish community, and our society as a whole. time and again over the years, i have witnessed the adl's taking smart, proactive action in controversy oh -- controversial. be part of the adl family.

we have the good fortune to hear some additional insights from a distinguished panel of threat, the american and global response, and how well law enforcement authorities are equipped today to prevent terrorism and extremism. journalist. counterterrorism, and the balance between national security and individual rights in the post-9/11 world.

currently an adjunct fellow at the manhattan institute, and a commentator on these issues, she is an author of books on biological weapons, and on the spread of islamic extremism. elliott abrams is the senior fellow for middle eastern studies at the council on foreign relations. he has had a number of senior white house post. he serves as a deputy national middle east for president george w. bush. mr. abrams new book, "tested by zion," was just published. cathy lanier, chief of police for the metropolitan police department. in's -- she established

first homeland security terrorism branch. adl is proud of our long relationship with chief lanier. she's a graduate of the league advanced course on terrorist threats. in 2009, after tollison police department received -- the metropolitan leased apartment received the shield award for their response to the shooting of the united states holocaust memorial museum. -- one of our nation's most

thoughtful writers, the senior fellow at the working -- brookings institute. he is the cofounder and editor in chief of the popular law fair blog, an online forum for discussions about the implications of national security policies. a former reporter, and for nine years and editorial writer for the washington post, he is the author of two books from counterterrorism issues. before i turn the floor over to ben, please join me in a warm welcome for our panel. [applause]

[inaudible] >> how about now? >> yes. >> i want to take as much time as possible for the panelists to be guided by your questions, which i will convey. before i do that, i was going to get about five minutes of thoughts in geographical order here from left to right. for every time, just to start it up, every time something like what happened in boston the last couple of weeks happens, is an immediate reversion in our political system, inevitably so. a series of questions that this

organization has addressed has taken positions on questions like under what circumstances can you or should you hold a terrorist suspect in the criminal justice system? what circumstances should you treat that person as a military detainee? what are the due process rights that we should and shouldn't regard as essential in the context of an unfolding terrorist emergency? these inevitably implicate foreign-policy, particularly as one is not necessarily sure in the unfolding situation whether in fact the attack is the mastic -- domestic, or advocates foreign-policy issues, or it is part of an ongoing military conflict rated to sort of, -- military conflict.

wherel as questions of lines are between free speech, including the free speech of radical and unpleasant individuals, and things that we actually want to intervene to prevent and stop. all of those issues are inevitably in play as the thing about the fall from what happened in boston. the panel here has unfortunately -- fortunately a range of opinions on those issues. fivee good to talk for minutes and then engage a little with each other. hopefully you guys will be sending in questions so that we can gauge with you. judy? >> thank you, ben. a key for being here today.

i want to congratulate the adl. abe was instrumental in my aboutbook, which was not terrorism. it was a golden era, the early 1980s, a. in which i was thinking about evil in the holocaust, and how people have reinvented their history. abe and the adl provided invaluable information. i have been focused on boston since that terrible event. i'm specifically focused coming from new york on the issue of how we prevented them. i wrote a controversial piece for the "wall street journal" -- it takes nothing away from boston's magnificent response.

you all thought you saw the amazing effectiveness of the response, the great look -- luck of having hospitals nearby. my question is, would we have stopped in new york? we might have. it is not to say that we might have some all situations. something is going to slip through. that is when it becomes important. in terms of prevention, because new york has repeatedly been targeted, because it remains the number one target, jihad he target, it has had to defend for itself. we have a police force of 34,000 uniformed police, 50,000 overall. a thousand are devoted to

combating and preventing terrorism, and its stored nearing -- an extra ordinary intelligence committee case and an extraordinary intelligence community. it is a question of priority. do you feel it is important for your police force him a whether you have 10 cops, or do you 1000 people devoted in new or the entire boston pd? do you the visiting mission that is important enough to devote

resources to? in europe we have set obviously yes. you cannot count on the fbi, because they are not local. the local cops are the people who know the community. they know what to look for. they know what is not normal. as a result, the brothers would have been of interest to the new york police department. onre is no way that a file someone like -- it would have been close and you they would have stayed on him. the trip to moscow would have been flagged.

ameone, an informant or tipster, or a member of the congregation of the temple congregations where they were would have come forth to read -- would have come forth. someone would have told the fbi this guy was problematic. everything i have seen from the aborted attempts in new york tells me that this is the kind of incident that would have been of concern to the nypd. the cyber unit would have at his online postings. he would have followed his interest in chechen terrorists and freedom fighters. they would've made closer contacts with moscow police, which whom they have a liaison relationship. there are many instances in

which this kind of tragedy might not have happened. i salute the boston police or its extraordinary effective response, but i think the name of the game for communities across the country is going to have to be mobilizing local police who know the community the best to prevent these incidents from happening great thank you. -- from happening. thank you. [applause] >> it is a pleasure to be here. let me step back from the local to the international and just ask for a minute, what is jihad he central today? i think the answer is in large part syria. there are about 5000 jihadis in syria. not rebels against the machine. these are one of the reasons why i think it has been a mistake to let the crisis grow for two years.

it has been a mistake from a humanitarian view. but from a jihadist pointed view, this has a shia backed -- -- some of talk about going south, to israel and other hard targets. another possibility is to iraq, where you have a history of fighting with which we americans are all-too-familiar. given the sunni populations, the grievances, there is another possibility. there is something else to say that is more direct threat to us. about a thousand or year. about 1000 are european, citizens of france, germany, netherlands, denmark.

where will they go? the police chiefs of those countries have already started talking publicly about the threats that they will go home. you can find comments by the belgian police, the danish police, the dutch police -- the

numbers are not so great for each of those countries. it is only 100 guys. think about that for a moment. i middle number like 75 highly trained jihadists, coming in from syria, pick your city, where there are significant populations where they can return. and speak the language as natives. if you take the dutch, the dutch muslim population is heavily moroccan. maybe some of those guys go home to morocco, and you can

find the moroccan police and security officials wondering what is next for those people. the attitude in the region is quite mixed. it is a strange thing. if you are a young jihadist linked to al qaeda, you would be arrested immediately. if you show up in syria, they will arm you and pay you immediately. the want you to take on regime in syria. they are less concerned about where you're going to be six months from this morning. come back in six months and we will see how concerned they are. this is a place where jihadists are gathering. there are about 500 jihadists there now that weren't a year

ago. itdoes -- if this goes on, will not be 5000. it'll be thousands and thousands more. they are doing decent jobs on tunnels between gaza and syenite. a bigst does not want conversation. a lot. the threat to a huge problem for israel. gathered this people in the sinai and start attacking, what do the israelis do? ignore it? "by late egyptian sovereignty -- by late egyptian sovereignty?" egypt.ting into

whatever israel does create a egypt.with from the point of view of the ninth of state and israel, -- the united states and israel, when you look at the northern border, how quiet it has been. syria in fester in they gather, we have to wonder how long will let quiet continued? thank you. >> i will try not to overlap. we have about 4000 special events here every year.

just this past week them on sunday we hosted a half marathon and the holocaust in thein a single day -- holocaust museum in a single day. i think not having the luxury of having 40,000 or 50,000 police officers assigned to intelligence hits on the local point. they know their community. we are extremely sensitive to the strongest of all liars. 42 these could be described as homegrown or domestic.

who is best positioned to detect those? that is your local police. for mean, 11 federal agencies here in the city, we have to leverage those with what we think would be consistent. officers assigned to about 19 different federal agencies on various different task forces. that are useder to very sensitive sites. we have those partners. washington d.c. not that long ago was considered the murder

capital of the world. 500 a year when a certain wording appeared we have reduced homicide -- 500 a year when i first started working here. we have reduce homicide by 56%. the key is knowing your community and having the trust of the community and the way for people to get information to you and get comfortable showing it to you. there is no difference with hung from terrorism. the charge we face now is mental health consumers' alone after the issue did hit that mark when it crossed a line and decide to take a weapon into a school or church or temple and open fire, and all of those things that local law enforcement are in the best position to detect. that the models

need to continue to be revised. i think communities that have good working relationships with local law enforcement understand how important it is to report suspicious activities through partnerships with local law enforcement. the last half marathon we had on sunday not only do we receive tips but we stopped it into a man running down the 13 mile route into backpacks because they looked a little bit out of place. he happened to be a member of the press. we're very happy that we stopped him. -- would two backpacks because he looked a little bit out of place. he happened to be a member of the press. we are very happy we stopped him. reliance and network

but largely on local connections that helps to detect anything. ignore the mental health consumers home ratifies. was anyears he extremist. or responded to the shooting, is of the criticism, here this radical website. speech, why isn't the fbi doing something? it is because it is protected speech. the fbi could undo anything. the key for us is knowing where they crossed a line from radicalization and extremism to action, just like boston. just like a mental health consumer of that crosses the line to action with the mass shootings.

that is the key lot of force and has to focus on. we do that through education. sure that we keep our folks engaged. we spend an extensive amount of time educating our circus workers -- service workers. you would be surprised how many things that we have had turned over to us from the public works employees that were picking up trash now. it could have been significant for us. it is about extending that network and having as many eyes and ears as you could have. if you do not have 1000 people, you better find a way to have a force that is at least that powerful. there are ways to do that.

>> i have a pilot questions here. a lot to say two things. they are both about the structure of our counter- terrorism debate. pointrst picks up on a about the line between radicalism turns from a speech specifically into the legal action as which one can intervene. a puzzle.es a bit of you do not want to wait until .omething goes boom you do not want to wait until

there is a disaster you are responding to. have the capacity to respond somewhere to the left of buoom. that is why the laws at the level are so important. you have the ability to prosecute and intervene at the point of action that is the support for the organization, in material interrelation support of terrorist activity or the point of action being the point of which you have agreed with somebody to commit an someal act any have taken significant step. that is one of the first point.

only draw that line, it is not shootingdefined by the at the holocaust museum. there are well antecedent steps before you have capacity to intervene. an event likehave what happened in boston, we immediately revert to an almost pre-scripted debate. it took about 24 hours to have members of the senate saying remaining brother should be held as an enemy combatants. we immediately had a discussion about whether and when he should be read his miranda rights. a lot of this conversation was blissfully informed by facts and

law. we go through it in is very burnished way -- and earnest way. andre debating detention criminal prosecution. are we at war or is this a law enforcement operation? the seednt to plant in your mind is is the idea that this is actually still and old of the debate that does not describe counter modern tennis -- modern counter-terrorism. it made a lot of sense to be 2002- from about 2004/2005. structure has been sufficiently changed. we should just wait and think

about the operations that we are actually conducting. what do i mean by that? we are not capturing large numbers of people any more in overseas counter-terrorism operations. not in iraqs we are any more and we are significantly disengaging from afghanistan. the environment in which we are capturing tens of thousands, in iraq it was literally tens of thousands of people who were in the american people. it does not exist anymore. the residual tension operations involve a facility in afghanistan that is being transferred to afghan controlled with a lot of hiccups.

166 people at guantanamo bay. this is a significant lead waning apart. waning a part.y we are still militarizing counter-terrorism. a veryitary side has .articular flavor military operations in uncovered spaces in the world's where we cannot engage law enforcemente e an from those regions. talkingting -- we're us are part of yemen. we're talking about certain parts of east africa.

what we have in the rest of the reversionsvery sharp to law enforcement authorities. -- we have bifurcated the terrace and structure in which domestically and in most of the world's counter-terrorism -- the terrorism's structure in which domestically and in most of the world counter-terrorism means people get lawyers. it means liaison with law enforcement and military is in most of the rest of the world. itthese particular places, ofns very aggressive stance

military and covert intelligence operations. it also involves special forces operations. stop there and leave you with the idea that it is about ourng a debate counter-terrorism that reflects the reality today in rather than the reality that existed in 2002/2003 when we were invading countries as a principal feature of our operations. thank you. i'm going to turn to this pilot questions and attach a name to of whose scenes at the right person to address it. how quickly does policy and law enforcement techniques adapt to new methods?

agile and doremely things very quickly. this brings me to an argument when i first started in the counter-terrorism world. there were several heated debate about why local chiefs are not being classified. not name the agencies. two weeks being told thate a very large event involved 8000 world delegates

coming to washington, the threat that they venue, withheld the information for seven months before briefing us reduce because our need to know was when it becomes a minute. -- because our need to know is when it became a minute. that is too late. a two-yeard probably debate on exactly that question. i do not care if it has been deemed credible or not. you give me everything and let me sort it out. a get to off the hook and allows me to adapt my strategies and .lanning thi if it does become credible, i have a police force to deal with it. [applause]

>> where is the next for coming from? >> i think we are out of time. geographically, i think there is a gathering in syria. jihadis is a lot of young men to worry about. the other thing we need to worry about is something we saw in mali. north africa in sub-saharan africa. we're seeingline, a good deal of trouble. we're seeing it sometimes in countries like nigeria.

she grabbed at what point to inia and some of those bases north erik -- north africa -- i would just point to syria and some of those places in north africa. i think we see what we see. islamic a problem from extremism. part of the problem is the unwillingness to say islamist extremism. threatot this amorphous out there. it comes from a particular place. it does not help us to deal with it if we are unable to talk about it. we're not going to be able to deal with -- deal with it from a police point of view if we cannot accurately describe it. that part of the threat we need

to address. >> thinking back to the description of what he did in fort hood, i think it is the best example of the problem. -- thech is asian hesitation was kept 24 hours. i do not have very much patience with the fed added debate about what we're going to call it. fanatic debate about what we're going to call its. certain sympathy with what has been said. i am also aware that people like you have community relation

needs to develop relationships in communities and it does not help matters to be especially explicit along the lines that eliot and judy are proposing. .et also dealt in washington i'm interested in your thought about good or bad an idea it is to be very open about the ideological and religious certain but not all perpetrators of major terrorist events. >> it is only important if you want to have effectiveness in your community. you have to be honest. if people are going to be offended, and some will, that is

the price of doing business. you have to have people engaged at the level they understand what you need the community engaged. sometimes those debates get heated. the always in the same way. people thank you for taking a beating. the situations that we have as i with here, s soon heard the location, he walked into the research council and opened fire on a security guard. i knew this was very likely going to be a domestic terrorist act. washington field office. let's work this jointly. youeople were why are

giving our case away? we do not know this is terrorism or not. realizeto stop and leches be honest about just beons -- and let's honest about motivations. >> there is another piece of this that nobody likes to talk hatred ofpt adl, jews. it is a phrase we do not like to use because it is so ugly. what isad so much of being written, not just part in the islamic world but europe, there's no other way to describe it. it is something we will never be able to deal with unless we all do what adl does, faces up to the enormous amount of hatred of jews in textbooks and

broadcasting that is thought to be confronted. [applause] >> the next question is near and dear to my heart. should congress passed a new authorization for the use of military force? i have written about this quite a bit. an act ofization is congress pass in 2001 that is the principal authorizing law for overseas military counter- terrorism operations. it is very closely tied to 9/11. it iseople agree that quite out of date. some people are joyful about that. they believe it will struggle to return to a more purely law- enforcement approach to counter terrorism. i am not a joyful about it.

there are things that we're doing that are very important. it is also very tenuously connected and not clearly authorized. it would be well worth the time and energy to think about what aspects of overseas conflicts it doesn't does not want to authorize prospectively and do that sooner rather than later. how important is it to put security cameras to monitor public spaces? how far would you go with this sort of monitoring? >> i am a huge supporter of using the technologies that are available. toust came back two days ago

talk about the analytical software that can be a tremendous force multiplier for local law enforcement and security. in washington we have probably the most technologically advanced department in the country. we have the technology we have integrated into the tvs. there is analytical software out there that can help with anything you can imagine in terms of leading a package unintended, sending others for cabs. using huge proponent of technology including cameras everywhere you can. i watched this in debate -- the

debate in washington d.c. ourved from a 1999 when first cameras went out to i cannot go to a community meeting today and i know the people will ask me, where is the camera in my neighborhood? i am seeing more and more ts, we have aenc guy the other day spend $300 on cameras for his home. walking guy walking around his house and call the police. people want to feel a sense of security that is reasonable. they want law enforcement to have access. withwant to feel safer common-sense use of technology.

does one deal with groups hamas and hezbollah? @ think the answer to that as -- i think the answer to that is it does not matter if a terrorist runs a school. he is still a terrorist. still killing innocent civilians. in the case of hezbollah in syria, they have been deterred right now. how many innocent israelis have the killed over time? the refuse absolutely to say they will not do it again. they will do it again. i been the position of united states must continue to be. it does not matter if you have unrelated activities that are

beneficial if you are feeding people. is a terrorist. these are organizations that have been dedicated by the united states. we should have nothing to do with them until they abandon those activities. >> that is part of what they used to get support. that is part of how they get support. >> i am with you in. . harder when ah group like hezbollah becomes the defacto lebanese government or the muslim brotherhood becomes the elected government of egypt. to say what do we do when they are legitimized by popular vote.

>> this is a confrontation question directed at you. [laughter] >> i find it counterproductive and incentive to figure point at the boston police department at this time. more productive would be suggestions on improving local law enforcement procedures and willingness to share best practices. [applause] feel free to respond. >> i hope i was not insulting the boston police. i talked about their magnificent response. i think the police department has to do more than that. they have to do what the d.c. police are doing, what the new york police are doing and what the l.a. police are doing. set aside a group of your own local cops whose mission is preventing the boston marathon from happening, and, at the moment the boston police

apartment did not have that kind of capability, they were with the fbi, there guidelines are very different and their approach is very different. our hearts go out to all the victims and we must concentrate cooly now on figuring out how to prevent the next attack. i salute that effort. >> one comment. the reality is 24 years in law enforcement, i can tell you even post 9/11, the average local law enforcement budget is created through a political process. the average person is more afraid of being the victim of a robbery than the victim of terrorist attacks.

to have the budget debit -- dedicated to solely counter- terrorism, is the most unheard of in any law enforcement in the united states. the challenge for law enforcement is to find ways where you can to convince your constituents. the people who are elected are put in office by people in your community. also, if that money is not allocated, you have got to be creative and find ways to do it. it is not easy. when i run homeland's security counter-terrorism drills, i do them in the most violent cities. people love it because it is very visible. i get my training in. in boston's defense, i would say it is not easy because it

takes a lot of money to build capability and people specifically to counter terrorism and get support in your budget is very difficult. [applause] >> that brings us naturally to the next question do we have the correct balance between security and civil liberties as terrorism continues to evolve? or do we need new strategies? anyone who wants to take a crack at that. >> i will. i will take another swipe at the associated press stories that were done on the muslim surveillance program of new york. these were a series of stories about the gross violations of civil rights of muslims in new york. this was 650,000 people who are muslim-americans.

40% of whom are born overseas. the series of articles alleged that rights were being violated largely by a community mapping project at the very beginning post 9/11 when the nypd try to figure out who was where and how to respond to that end who ofe likely to be supportive counter-terrorism efforts and who were likely to be hostile. this year is not only won the pulitzer prize, but it made the job at nypd 10 times more difficult. fear within the muslim community that had not been in there,

because within the entire series, they were never able to show harm to a single muslim- american living in new york. that journalism like that really complicated mission rather than trying to find creative ways of knowing that you will be watching places of concern, whether or not they happen to be in a mosque or a coffee shop or a garage. these places must be watched. it does not mean people were being profiled or targeted because of their religion or race. it is a hard balance. the nypd has done it well. that is just my view. the courts are looking at this issue and they will have resolution. every community has to make the trade-off. it is not an easy one. i could be wrong. >> what should be done about the remaining guantanamo bay prisoners.

this is another one directed at me. the remaining population at guantanamo, there is a variety of issues that relate to that, most exigent of them is that a large number of them are refusing to eat right now. you have the very real possibility that force feeding, which is in fact taking place, some of them will starve themselves to death. the larger question is a very difficult one, in large measure, for two reasons. a little more than half of the residual population at guantanamo are from yemen. it is hard to keep track of people once you send them to

yemen. the second reason is that for a larger group of people -- an additional group of people, which the administration in principle would like to transfer out of guantanamo, congress has slapped a very severe restrictions on their ability to remove people from guantanamo, either to bring them to the united states for tribal lore for a larger group of people to resettle in some other third country. you have a group of people who it is very difficult to get rid of who, in principle, the administration would like not to be holding. that has become a somewhat intractable problem. eithery answer to it is for the administration in congress to bite the bullet and assume more risk, and release people who in fact do pose some rest -- risk, or take the

political heat in a legal status that gives a lot of people a lot of discomfort. i am not sure there are a lot of alternatives there. the final component of the question very briefly involves that group of people, including the 9/11 conspirators and the coal bombing conspirator who you do want to bring to trial. impossibles made it to bring them to trial in the united states and federal court, so you are inevitably dealing with a military commission system in that regard. that system has had a lot of problems getting off the ground. there are a lot of different challenges that are wrapped up in the question, none of which has easy answers.

how does policy and law enforcement protect against loan terrorists, inspired by ideology inspired by the internet and social media? i will add to that. presumably not tied specifically or at the direction of any individual overseas terrorist group. >> i thought local law enforcement was a lone wolf. extremist-driven. i think that is because our communities are prepared to report to police when they see erratic behavior. if somebody is making a purchase, it seems out of place or behavior while making a purchase seems out of place, there -- they are a lot more comfortable having a trip wire.

motivated lone wolves. there are tripwires there that our communities -- here, where we have communities that will report those things and gives us an advantage, they come to law enforcement at some point, on the other hand, because there is -- i would recommend a national 91-like system for people to call when they have a loved one, a fellow member, or a neighbor who has a mental health problem, they do not want to call the police. when they dial 91 and we come, the confrontation with the mental health consumer prices can turn bad very quickly. in every case, when we see the mental health consumer who goes on a shooting spree, you have all of these anecdotal stories from family members and friends and they do not want to call 911.

there is no relationship, there is no network to call and say, i need help for my son, for my next door neighbor. those are the ones we find out after the tragedy takes place. we are in a lot better a place than a lone wolf. >> lowell is in some ways one of the scariest components of the discussion, because you have so few avenues. you do not see the overseas the medications to monitor. you do not have financial transactions with known terrorists. necessarilyill not show up in the normal interactions that you have that you are monitoring that give

rise to information. on the other hand, and this is comforting, this is not a new problem. there have always been people who, for reasons of their own, be they ideological or things they have read, a turnaround and do terrible things within their communities. this is in some ways the least novel component that we think of when we think of counter terrorism prevention. i think we have time for one or two more questions. what about access to nonconventional weapons by terrorists? how big a threat is this? how can you prevent it? >> we see this in syria, where one of the questions is dealing with chemical weapons is -- what if there is a breakdown of order and the jihadis get hold of them?

so far, this has not happened. governments that control nuclear weapons have been good about maintaining control of them. we have never seen an incident of this kind. i would say, i am frankly more concerned about the use of nonconventional weapons, chemical or nuclear, by government. there may be a prayer around the corner. if we are talking about syria today, the french, the israeli, and now the american government, in the past, where gas has been used in iraq and syria, it has been by government. allgreatest threat we are looking at now is one that really the whole international community has identified, which is the search for a nuclear weapon by the government of

iran. possession of a nuclear weapon by the government of north korea. this is something to worry about. the greater threat now is governments that are evil and have these weapons, or on the threshold of getting them. forgetecial plea not to about a weapon of mass destruction i have spent a lot time in the former soviet union looking at. that is biological weapons. the dead is dead. generally, 70,000 in syria should be enough to warrant some kind of action, whether used in a chemical or conventional way. continuesething that to be laboratory driven, dual use, very hard to detect, very hard to attribute after its use, please remember the amtrak

flutters. we have a small case, but lot -- biological weaponry is still about 10 countries are believed to be pursuing in earnest and the biggest thing we had going for us was the soviet union, the dreadful, dreadful technology, a country is actually weaponized eboli. i've visited places in the 1990's that still had the scientists that know how to do that, so we cannot forget about that threat because germs are contagious, but other than that, i agree -- i think we should focus on nukes. >> one question like to wrap up what. to what extent has the university made progress to

court made terror since 9/11? just go down the line and give whatever wrapup thoughts you may have? >> we are a whole lot safer in america than we were before 9/11 because you have an educated population, number one, that war is about this. you have groups like the adl which cause -- call attention to hatred and the kind of hatred that comes from violent activity. will we ever be? can we be? probably not. we have made a lot of progress. what you saw in boston was the result of hundreds of hours of drill, drill, drill, emergency first responders, people knew what they're doing to me, the class was really more than half full, as tragic as that of that was. >> i agree. we are safer. think back to 9/11, 12 years ago. there was a country in the world, israel, that had this problem of dealing with terrorism.

we were concerned about it. we thought, it is a terrible thing, we will help when we can. it was one country. after 9/11, then remember the tax in london and madrid, more and more local police began to be involved in this and coronate. it is clear the amount of work being done, the focus of one country in israel to focus on an enormous amount that has done a great deal to make a safer. >> post 9/11, we are in a significantly better place than some of the international relationships with other local law enforcement around world. on a regular basis, we now hold large group conferences and exchange information. i think it is significantly better. it took 9/11 to make that happen, but it has happened >>

i am entirely in agreement with that. one of the amazing things about the american counter-terrorism, from the military side to the law enforcement side, to the sides nobody ever thinks about, like the tracking of financial stuff that goes on in the treasury department, is how international it all is and how much it depends on a day-to-day basis, our to our bases, on liaison relationships with foreign government and foreign law enforcement intelligence and military, and that those relationships, by and large,

actually do work on an hour to hour, day to day basis. they sometimes work with regard to countries that very publicly reject to american policy. the international, there are obviously gaps. by and large, the international operation is extraordinary given the ferocity of any american sentiment in many places around the world. [applause] affairsouse veterans' committee chairman is our guest this week on "newsmakers." he will talk about issues facing veterans including jobs, the defense claims, and allied officials have been paid bonuses while the backlog continues to grow. watch sunday at 10:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. eastern here on c- span. this weekend, a look at the state of latino america including jobs come immigration,

education, and foreign policy hosted by tavis smiley and the william velazquez institutes including luis gutierrez, a republican strategist and cnn contributor and a navarro, and a former small business administrator feder george w. bush. join us sunday at 10:30 a.m. eastern here on c-span. at news coverage of perpetrators of violent crime and mass casualty events. panelists include reporters from the "hartford courant" in the psychiatry department chairman from the mental health facility here in newtown, connecticut. this is about an hour and 20 minutes.

>> the story of the perpetrator makes a lot of people uncomfortable. it makes many victims uncomfortable. it in a challenging way pulls the spotlight away from those who suffered on to a person who has committed a horrific series of acts. how did you approach that question here, especially because we have a perpetrator who is dead and who cannot speak for himself? how do you put together a story of someone who first of all is no longer with us and secondly, has committed a series of acts which most of us find really challenging to comprehend? >> some people do not even want to under his name, so imagine

getting an assignment in which you have to write about adam lanza. there was no avoiding saying his name for me and my colleagues. no one was talking. you can just imagine what it was like to go to a newtown and even mention his name to people. people did not want to talk about anything to do with him. here we were, faced with some reporting that we had heard. there were some stories that were circulating. we did not know if they were true or not, so we were also facing how you deal with the information that might not be true. it just goes back to the basics. we just started doing what we do every day with stories. we started with phone calls, reaching out to people, reaching out to family members who were very reluctant to talk. several family members were very honest -- they were feel for --

fearful for their families, for their businesses, and they wanted to cooperate because they did feel that there were some in tos of nancy lanza tequila that were not accurate and that needed to come out, so we faced a lot of challenges in terms of trying to get accurate information, but as we proceeded with the story, we were able to nancyvarious things about and adam that debunks some of the reporting that was out there, but i will tell you this -- some of the previous reporting made it difficult for us to reach out because i called a family member, and this particular family member said to me, "why should i talk to you when it took the media three days to correct that nancy was not a teacher at the school?" you are faced with a challenge

of you do not want to defend romance reporting, but you are faced with the idea that they are sort of right. how am i going to convince a family member that our portrayal will be accurate when so much of what they have seen is not? >> in addition to the most obvious, glaring fact, what were some of the other myths you found yourself encountering? what did people get wrong? >> i get the sense that there was this whole idea of her as this doomsday prepare, that she was stockpiling arms and she was concerned about this economic collapse, and we did not find that to be true. we did learn that she did purchase firearms, that she did a lot of shooting. she was a new england farm girl, and she learned to shoot at a very young age. she grew up on a farm, and in

addition to her own history with firearms, she introduced them to her children, and when she introduced them to her oldest son, she felt that though adam did have his issues, she felt that she did not want to have run in part of that culture and not have her other son part of the culture. if you agree with it or not, that was sort of her thinking -- why should i let one son do this one another one does not? someou had to make interesting choices in how to tell the story. not just what you find out, but how you tell it. talk about that. >> one two riders want to write, that can be somewhat difficult. i do not know how many of you ,atch the "front line" episode but i have known josh for 18

years. we've been reporting together for a long time. when we knew that there would be a camera in the back of the car, that was something that we definitely -- i can say we were not very comfortable with it. when you are negotiating phone calls for a sensible story, for lack of a better way of describing it, and to sort of like brokering a deal or trying to convince someone to talk to you. we did not want a lot of that behind-the-scenes on television. we had cameras following us at all times in addition to trying to report the story, so what we ended up doing was we did all that reporting, and then we sat down together, sorted on the -- sort of unfolded the story of what we were able to find out with what we knew about adam and nancy. >> one other thing and maybe we will move on to guns, but this

is important. often after a mass shooting or another mass casualty, police, law enforcement, all kinds of agencies will spend a lot of time interviewing perpetrators, trying to find out what makes them tick. that is going on right now in of the suspects .s being interrogated right now adam could do that, obviously. the publicy are now pose a forensic examiner of the public posey forensic examiner of this guy. you have to come up with an understanding of the sky. how is your understanding of him different than when you began the story, and how do you now understand to the extent that one can what happened?

>> i think the reports from my colleagues, from sources that that he had this sort of fascination with mass killing -- i think that definitely painted a pretty big portrait of what type of person he was. one of the things that joshed and i wanted to get to the bottom of was his education -- that josh and i wanted to get to the bottom of was is education. he was in school. he was taken out of school. everything he started, he did not finish. his mother was a definite big part of that. he was in and out of school, even when there were high school officials that said he seemed to be doing well. all of a sudden, he is a dank out of school. that is one of the things i definitely want to find out

eventually -- what was it that led him to be taken out of high school? several people felt that he was doing pretty well there. i guess, for a lot of people, understanding adam lanza is sort of the one thing everyone wants to know. i have covered a lot of cases where the case goes to court, and i never realized before how court and the discovery that comes out of cases can be such a crutch to a reporter. if adam lanza was taken to trial, we would be learning so much more about him. i covered a home invasion case in cheshire, connecticut, and i covered the trial for both killers, and we learned so much about them in court. to me, now we have this item .anza -- adam lanza he will never get an attorney. he will never be taken to court.

we will never know everything about him. >> there is sort of the ghost of this case because it is another very emotional, very public murder case, but let's touch another aspect of this, which is guns. one of the challenges for all of keep reporters is how to attention on a difficult issue. public attention is there when there has been a mass shooting, but then what? one place where there is a massive amount of gun homicide is philadelphia. you have a project designed to address that, and that is a new way for journalism to go about this. talk a little about what you do and where you think it leaves you about journalism and guns and what needs to be done. >> thank you for having me, and thank you to everybody that made this happen and everybody who is

participating. the gun crisis reporting project is a nonprofit solutions digital journalism community almost in philadelphia. we launched it a little more than a year ago, and i could go on about all sorts of metrics and traffic and communities research and other services we provide, but really, we are filling a gap in recording -- reporting that is not just frankly an enormous opportunity. --m reluctant to try to find defined philadelphia of a. nobody's trauma or loss is worse than anyone else's. philadelphia's is different. 99% of the violence in america does not involve mass shootings. i could give you statistics

about philadelphia all day, but we have the homicide per-capita in major met -- we have the lead rate of homicide per capita in major american cities. more people have been shot to death in philadelphia since september 11 in the total number of victims killed by terrorists since september 11. and yet, -- and for lots of reasons to to the media contraction and other complications -- it is not very well recorded at all. at the digital versions, the web sites of the philadelphia major news organizations compared to our data from the police department, i found that 80% of the incidents went completely uncovered. in the coverage we found -- and i want to be fair to the few that do rich reporting -- in the coverage we found, 97% of reports never mentioned route causes of gun violence or solutions. oftenper reporting is reduced to stenography or police

reports, and television reporting sometimes amounts to that plus fear mongering. there is a lot of room for improvement. but the one we did not expect, the most amazing one is gratitude from people we meet in the field, from our digital communities, people who e-mail us and call us and say finally someone is looking at the problem in context. that is the problem side of our formula. and we try to balance that with an equal balance of solutions reporting. the most encouraging leads i found so far come from public health and criminology, where innovations are showing double- digit reductions in communities year after year. this makes us wonder why they are not applied more often. there are things that work, and we are not doing them. there's a lot of room for

improvement. we are stepping away from some journalism traditions and objective to be. i'm not so concerned with and hearing to old traditions as much as i am to just getting it right. >> functionally, in sort of a typical week, what do you do at gun crisis that would be different than 90 administration or in this room? what do readers, down loader's see, and how they respond? how does it work? >> there are four primary journalist working on it, myself.g we all have day jobs. this is entirely a volunteer effort so far, although we have sort of an economic strategy moving along at last, but it starts when i wake up in the morning and see what has happened overnight. it starts in my e-mail, and it is a horror show of suffering

delivered by the guys who do most of the field work. it is in my e-mail every day and in their view finder every night, but it is the 365-day reality for a lot of people in philadelphia for all of their lives. when i compare that with official sources, with other media reports so there is a measure of aggregation and attribution, so we have original reporting, and we compare and contrast and try to fill in the gaps. we do not spend our wheels on stories that everyone else is covering. i think the most important difference is the way that our journalists collaborate with the community in the field. it has rubbed off on the others.

i should put this in context -- i come from this old tradition. i have done things. i have made mistakes due to competitive pressures. i have not always treated people well. but if we consider it our responsibility to everybody we cover, it also results in, i think, better journalism. joe will more often start by walking up and expressing his condolences, explaining what he is doing, why he is doing it, and asking if they agree if it is a good idea. that is the best practice. it is not like that every day, but that is what we strive for, and the response has been enormous, so then we are invited back to memorials. rather than that hit and run reporting which has, frankly, employed photographers where i

come from. >> connecticut, where several of us at this table hail from -- most of us -- was the birthplace of the gun industry. in the aftermath of sandy hook, you have been looking at guns in a new way. talk a little bit about how you began thinking about this. >> we were tasked with covering everything that moves related to sandy hook, trying to understand it, both in an immediate sense and in a broader sense as well. significanthere's a debate over guns, over gun violence, over access to guns, so i was asked to look at the antural divide, and it is important story to tell. if there are journalists in the room here, one of the things i would advise is to really understand the cultural divide over guns, and if i were to ask

for a show of hands, who thinks the first amendment is critically important to our democracy, i suspect i would see lots of hands go up, and we are in new york, if i were a state legislator and i had a bill to introduce that would outlaw pornographic images involving people just up as nuns, can i get your support, all the hands would go down. the question i would ask is -- are you seriously telling me that if we ban none pornography that the very next step is you are not allowed to criticize your government, that sense of yes, but it is just off the table, we are first amendment absolutist -- we do not even have that discussion -- that is the very same passion that exists among a very large swath of the country with respect to the second amendment. that there are some who really do believe that politicians do

ultimately want to take their guns away, and some politicians have said things sort of along those lines, but nevertheless, i journalism does not really have a lot of similarity with firearms. it has kind of in this very divisive issue. me personally, may be because i spend a lot of time with it, i think it is more divisive than abortion, more divisive than equality for gays and lesbians. this is a nation cleaved into people comfortable with firearms and people not comfortable with firearms, and it is so difficult that we are talking about an object that is the ultimate offensive weapon and the ultimate defense of weapon, and it makes it sort of hard to move the debate. maybe not for everyone, but for the millions of people who say

if sandy hook does not get these gun nuts to change their position they do not know what will, there were millions of pro-gun people saying i of sandy hook does not get these done grabbers to change their position, they do not know what will. it really is important as journalists if we are going to cover this debate to understand that divide. so i don't in, and that in iran shows your -- -- that imminent grant shows you -- [laughter] >> you found yourself swimming where? >> we originally thought of looking just at the divide in newtown in connecticut, a wealthy, liberal state with a strong tradition of gun manufacturing but not, you know, the first state on everyone's list about a strong cup -- strong gun culture.

several months before the shooting, there had been a debate about unrestricted outdoor shootings that were seen as kind of a nuisance by a lot of people. they drafted some legislation that would sort of put some limitations on wind literally you could go out in your backyard and fire off semiautomatic weapons, and there that.huge backlash about it was seen by a number of people as a second amendment issue. we ended up kind of broadening it to that divide in connecticut, the divide in the u.s., and what we found is as much as there were people who very wanted to make this any sort of demographic divide, this is about the south and the mountain states versus the coast, this is about more educated people versus less educated people, wealthy -- you know, this divide exists everywhere.

very much in our state. if anyone was watching the debate in our legislature over gun legislation, thousands came out on both sides to support extremely passionately about this issue. really, i found it really educational. just how strong that divide was everywhere in the country including in connecticut. volatile,n issue this emotional under any circumstances, let alone in the shadow of one of the worst killings in america's history, what kinds of narrative choices did you make? how do you tell a story? how do you navigate it? for me, i had the luck of -- because i was doing something with "front line" so we were working on this an awful long

time, so at the inevitable point when i have the meeting with my editor where i turn in a story that would take a week and a half to read and he tells me how long it can be, and i act like a diva and we fight, having spent this much time -- we did almost 40 interviews -- first off, i was able to say, "you have to give me time to say this is a great issue of national import. people are looking to us on this. let's do this story right." step 1 was i had a lot of space to work with. from that, i kind of wrote the story that we did in chapters, partly to make it manageable, but to let people kind of have their say. there were a number of people in groups of people with different perspectives on the issue. and gave them honestly and

fairly without loaded language and sneering asides and the like, just say their peace. i got decent feedback after it from both sides and even some people grudgingly said, "i do it was ok but i guess that you did not make this other side look really as crazy as i think they are. i sort of added knowledge to the divisive gun debate and pushed the envelope know where on that. i thought there was this a value of listening to what people had .o say and just laying out these people's perspectives and let people agree or disagree. >> the connecticut legislation now has passed, and the

government has signed this fairly broad bill that both introduces a wide range of restrictions on guns and magazines and so on and sets a little bit different mental health structure. where do you think the gun issue in connecticut is going to go from here, or are we done with it? where do you think the story goes? >> we will see challenges, two- hour laws. there are certainly a number of pro-gun people looking for a good test case, be it new york law, a connecticut law -- most states that have passed legislation after newtown have passed legislation enhancing gun rights, making it easier to get a gun, expanding the number of places you can carry a gun. to the extent there was an effect on gun legislation, it is not the way many legislators

thought it was going to go, but in terms of connecticut, the to kind of decide set the parameters for the second amendment, we do these restriction great a under the second amendment. i suspect these specific restrictions will hold up under the current court decision in this case is, but it is definitely going to court. >> let's change the focus a little bit to mental health. it is striking how much mental areth seems -- themes threaded throughout the story, from the question of adam lanza and his life and motivations to the challenges facing survivor families and the newsound community, and conn's mental

health system -- the newtown community and connecticut's mental health system. as a clinician, as a psychiatrist, who has worked communityth newtown and as someone who is active in the state, what stories do you think need to be told? what issues need to be eliminated in this next phase of searching a little more deeply -- what issuesok need to be eliminated -- illuminated? >> let me start with what was said earlier today about the speed with which information is driven to us. we do not even receive it anymore. it just comes to us. the amount, the sheer mass of i had 1300 e-

mails in the first week that this happen. i was talking to someone who had 28,000. the amount of information that is so overwhelming -- it is hard to sift through it. if there's anything the press should be responsible for, it is sifting through that information and helping the public be informed to know what information is really critical. where is the point, after all? it is not just a voyeuristic thing, but it is meant not only to inform but hopefully change things for the better. with respect to, you know, mental health, i was at a dinner party christmas eve, and a friend of mine said, cassette and obviously, the guy was crazy." i said, "i don't think so."

and he looked at me like i was crazy. how good to say that? oh, you are a psychiatrist." there was nothing i could say or do that would change his mind. this idea of mental illness in .he press has been perpetrated there was an editorial shortly after the boston bombing suggesting another example of a need to address the mental health system, which was ultimately,because it appears this was a terrorist act, but i really want to see this also as a terrorist act in so far as it is a rare event and, yet, it draws a tremendous amount of attention, and that is exactly what terrorism seeks to do.

people may have mental illness, but just because they have mental illness does not mean that that is the reason for why they do what they do. they still have hopes and dreams and desires. they want to be famous. they want to be on stage. bringing up the idea that it is mental illness stops the conversation, and it really does not allow us to move forward and to understand better what the problem is. inee it as a larger problem society and people have a need and are -- in our culture to be on stage, and we celebrate celebrity independent of how one gets there.

i think that in some ways, that is hijacked -- that has hijacked what we really intended in our ideas about becoming famous, by doing something, doing good works. i think the press talks about mental illness in two ways. they talk about mental illness as a euphemism for evil. this is very common. we all use it. i use it. it is reasonable, and we should make everything more, but the press also talked about mental illness, and when we talk about evil, we talk about who is the guilty party. the press talks about mental illness in a responsible manner, which is that mental illness which is that it is biologically

driven underlying disorder that needs treatment and that somehow the systems failed that individual if they go on to commit some heinous crime, and there are nice clear borders to the idea, and that you can watch it on tv and be fascinated and also say, "that is not me. i do not have that. that will never happen to me." thatnk there was a blog came out and got a lot of press, and iadam lanza's mother" think this is an example of that. there is no division between bad and bad in the world to deal with. blaming the system.

there is no blaming the individual. we just feel guilty. when something like this happens, there's a tremendous amount of guilt that is experienced those who are treating these people. weather or not he had someone treating him, my first thought ,"s "i feel bad for this guy because it is impossible to be able to predict these things. do you know how many college students have homicidal ideas? 7%. 70% reported homicidal ideas in the last year.

what do we do with that? you have to put it in context, even if they have mental illness. and getting more information is not necessarily going to give us the answers. just by way of example, think about adolf hitler. a journalist wrote a book explaining hiller, and he discusses of the different reasons why hitler may have done what he did -- the holocaust. there is no clear answer. and we have more information on hitler than we have -- he was probably the most transparent public figure that existed, and we still do not know ultimately what drove him to do what he did, and there is still debate going on. i'm not sure that getting more information about adam lanza is going to necessarily ultimately

solve our problems. one final thing in terms of the press and the recovery of newtown -- we are not the same people in public as we are in private. when we are in front of the cameras, we tend to exaggerate our pluses and minuses. we like to please. if we think people of looking for us to be a victim, we will play that out. if we think they are looking for us to be the hero, we will play that up. it is not conscious, but it is there. i think the attention that newtown has received by the press has magnified that impact. ultimately, it slowed the recovery of the town. >> let me push you on one thing. you have been doing clinical work in western connecticut for a long time. you know the community.

you know the system. you know its flaws and its strengths. if i'm an investigative reporter, and as one corner of this, i'm trying to figure out what parts of the mental health safety net might have -- what elements of a mental health safety net might have done a better job of catching someone like adam lanza regardless of this case, where should we be looking as journalists? >> if you look at the bills that are going before the state currently, none of them, if they become statutes, would capture -- have captured or will capture someone like adam lanza. there is a lot of focus on committed outpatient treatment, but one needs to have committed ,ome sort of act of violence and adam lanza was non-violent

prior to his act. i'm not clear -- at least nobody has reported this to the press -- that he ever express a violent thought. do you know how many kids are preoccupied with violent video games? or massary wars killings? i'm just not clear in my mind that there is an easy solution from a mental health perspective. i think the safest solution, obviously, it is to keep guns away from people who are prone towards those types of things, but that gets back to gun legislation. >> are there none the less places in the mental health system that reporters should be looking to answer some questions now? >> there are a lot of problems with the mental health system, not just locally but statewide

as well as nationally. thinga very challenging because there are limited dollars to go around, and we all know our health-care system is broken, so states in the nation have to prioritize where they put their dollars, and they have to make choices about if it will be in mental health care or trauma care or cancer care, and that really requires a national debate. but it is simple economics. >> let's do some questions from the room. we will continue the conversation. that is aa question little bit different than what we have been talking about. i'm curious about the mental health of reporters who cover the stories, particularly day

after day when it goes on sometimes for months or longer. how you deal with that, how you handle moving through that and still do your job. >> i should say that this is a huge and very important issue. it is something we think about a lot. how did your newsroom cope with this at the time? you guys were immersed not just in your own work, but you have to delve even more intimately than usual. -- i mean, there was a fair amount of open crying in the newsroom, which you do not often see or think about associated with a newsroom, but there was a lot of it. i think we all also understood we really had a job to do and focused on that. i will tell you -- it had not

especially occurred to me the emotional trauma -- and again, not to put this anywhere on the plane that the folks in newtown were dealing with, but nevertheless, we were immersed in it more than average people away from it, and certainly, gil'se learned about stepdaughter, that made it more difficult, but it was an e-mail from you to spread the word that there were resources available for reporters struggling with this that it struck me how difficult this was. has had to deal with so many more difficult stories that i have. >> our editor had sent out an e- mail to the staff saying that if anybody needed to talk to someone, it was available. when i saw the e-mail, to be quite honest with you, i had

wished that i had received that e-mail previous one i had covered long, drawn-out, horrific court cases because when you are sitting in court, you are seeing evidence day in and day out, and you do not really think it is affecting you, but it does start to affect you. there are some photographs from cases i have covered that will stay with me forever. to be honest, when i saw that e- mail, i responded to the entire staff. i do not know if you remember, but i said if anybody feels that they need to get some help or talk to someone, do it because i do know that a case that i had covered in connecticut, and number of reporters -- a number of reporters had suffered after that. if you do not have strong support at home -- i do. my husband and a 10-year-old daughter who can bring levity to any situation. when i saw that e-mail, i was really heartened. you need to make sure you take charge of your own emotions so

that you can be better reporter, and two editors out there, reach out to your reporters and make it clear to them that help is there. i have really great editors, and they do that, but it was really great to see a company-wide e- mail go at. be a champion for your reporters when you do not think they can do it for themselves. thank you very much for the panel. i have no questions about the volume of coverage that this terrible tragedy received nationally and internationally, but you raised two questions that from a journalistic point of view i would appreciate hearing the journal is -- the panelists' responses. you pointed out statistically that the volume of people killed by firearms far out weigh the

numbers affected by mass murders. pointing out again how extremely unusual mass murders are, as horrible as they are, but there was something else, which is there is often a failure to report on what we know about toh the causes and solutions the more common deaths and injuries associated with crime and firearm violence, having just finished serving as a member of the attorney general's and as a regular reader and consumer of media, i'm curious as to what your take is on why -- how are those , and why is there

such a disproportionate lack of coverage about the numbers and the issue of solutions that you mentioned? >> that is a terrific question that is a terrific question. i worry less about how we got here. a few years ago and discovered for myself the discipline of conflict journalism and studied for a year before teaching a course on the topic. i wanted to mention that because when i looked into that, the complaint about -- i will get back to your question, because it is a long way around, but it is worth it -- the quarrel with war reporting is not only is there a bias towards violence but that it is often just regurgitates the voice of the elites, it does not represent all of the stakeholders, it does not look at the chronology.

when i started thinking about all of the requirements of conflict journalism, it reminded me of when i talk basic reporting in missouri a few years ago, and this is just good reporting. if a student went off to cover a school board meeting and only had a quote from the president and not the teacher who do not talk to the students or "c"hbors, that is about a in journalism school, so why do we accept this? a guy in philadelphia said, couldn't you say all of that about gun violence, violent crime in philadelphia, and i said absolutely. and that is one of the tools. if we do not accept it from undergraduate journalism students, i don't know why we accept it from -- traditionally we see it more in the media, but the problem then is it is

not being done at all because of contraction in the media and also in new media it is difficult to monetize bad news, so how do we get the way out of this? it would probably be some evolution of social media journalism. collaboration across the communities that we used to think of as journalism and audiences, to tell the whole story, and to reorganize the information. the information is out there today, so we have to look at why it is not getting to the audience and what we can do to improve it. it is not difficult to do, it is just easier to be lazy. >> i think there may be something else to it. that ourto me definition of what is news handed down the last 150 years often has to do with what is egg with what is new or

different, with what is least typical, and whether it is in new york or philadelphia or the violencehaven, that is most typical is the kind that is least likely to generate headlines. we are giving the public and inverted pyramid of coverage, and inverted pyramid of threat analysis. based on what is most ordinary. the big threat may be what is most ordinary, and yet it is easier for us to define as news. someone going into an elementary school and shooting a couple dozen children than it is to look at the number of gun homicides and their causes in hartford and new haven and bridgeport or philadelphia or anywhere else. it, too,hat is part of

and one of the reasons that jim's project is so interesting is it challenges the notion of what is front page. you say it gone homicide, let's look at it. ,> you are off to a good start and i have been working on this as well. we are working on a tool to analyze news coverage. i have some rough numbers come just from looking at newsfeeds in philadelphia, and about 90% of the coverage goes to stories with easy labels, "stray bullet, victim caught in the crossfire ," and a few things i am forgetting. at first glance, none of it fits under those banners. if it calls for deviation from the norm and novelty, roughly one person has been killed every day the last 25 years in philadelphia, then the one person killed today is not in itself a deviation. by old metrics, it is not news. >> over here.

>> thank you. hello question mark sorry. i am a photojournalist, and i spent roughly 10 days in newtown covering. i want to make a comment first in that it is just a bit of irony in regards to the reporting, but probably only anniversary of the date the friday after, the 14th, there was a visual. if there was anybody from the area, it is a park that is part of the town where they have government offices. i believe that it is a formal mental hospital. >> fairfield hills. >> and it is this mass vigil with a couple thousand people, and in the background this old building that at one time was this mental facility, part of the state's, which is now closed.

i found some irony in that, considering it had been reported. the question is, at the very beginning of your comments, you had said -- and i am loosely following, but you said to being famous is very important to people. perhaps are suggesting -- are you suggesting that people put their humanity aside just be famous? are you suggesting perhaps that at least in part that was the intent, because he needed to be famous? it was so important that humanity became secondary? >> i really cannot speak for the i doers motives, but believe our culture often places celebrity above everything else. how one gets there becomes really secondary from getting oure, and i think television, reality tv, things

of this nature, i think that shows that. but to bebe critical, critical, i think that does exist in our culture. i think it is a problem. >> ok. dave cullen. i wrote a book on columbine. i wanted to clarify the 70% figure, because i thought that was fascinating. was it 70% of college students thought about homicide, fantasized? >> had a, subtle thought in their last year. >> and how did we know that? >> i knew it from steven pinker's book, "the better angels of our nature," which is on the fall of violence in recent years, so he was quoting it and i am quoting him. >> i was just curious. was it a survey? >> i am not sure how the study

was designed, but in the book he says that one of his students yelled out, "the other 30% are lying." these were male students, by the way. >> i was wondering if anybody else on the panel wanted to comment on the idea of red flags and how easy they are to see in retrospect, if we overplay this idea? >> i was fascinated by the fact that the fbi interviewed one of the bombers a year ago and cleared him. so if the fbi can miss reading a bomber, what does that show us in a mental health field? i mean, being able to predict future violence is just an impossible task. and there is just no way around it. elaine, did you have any

thoughts on that, having looked at the shooter so closely? well, i guess in the two sure home invasion case, the red flags were there. he had this long history of breaking into peoples homes,, burglarizing them with night vision goggles. the red flags were there on that. stephen haynes was the other defendant in this case. both, incidentally, are on death row in connecticut. they are part of the group that still faces the death penalty, although there will be argument tomorrow at supreme court on that whole issue of whether or not it is retroactive. the red flags were there, criminal history and whatnot. in one case, had he stayed in school, in the system, maybe those flags would have been there for somebody else to see. he killed his mom, and his mom

clearly was the one person who probably knew the most about him. what was interesting to me, and i try to see if the father would speak with me, i have tried on numerous occasions to get him to talk to me, there was something in 2010 that just made him cut his father off, if what his father is telling me is true, or what i have been told from people who know him. that was something in 2010 really just set adam off and made him cut off his father and his brother. the divorce was going on, he was getting remarried. we don't know if that was the key, but the thing i have always thought about with adam, you were talking about the need to be famous and all of that, i don't know. i have not seen anything with that, but the little girl who said he looked very angry, i think the anger issue -- i don't know, this is just a guess on my part, but perhaps when

the report comes out and the police release all of that, his anger issues may really tell us perhaps what drove him to do what he did. >> any other questions? >> from live stream, monica rogers wants to know, as a culture, what are three things the doctor would recommend that we do differently, such as no video games or parenting differently, that kind of thing? >> that is it. >> god. , it is aboute community, it is about a network. clearly, studies demonstrate over and again that the stronger there is a network and there is a community, i think the well earlierd it today about communication, open and available communication is critical.

obviously, there are red flags with respect to adam. he was uneducated, he was isolated, he was going nowhere with his life. , i don'tis true with know, 95% of the kids that are referred to me. , you know, find it prescribe someto sort of recommended treatment. but ultimately, you look at rates of mental illness, are rates of mental illness are no different, serious mental illness are no different in our society than in western europe. our rates of personality disorders are no different. so what distinguishes us from western europe? why are we violent and western europe is not? >> let me push you slightly. you said, ok, it is all about

community, and that is good. you are in a room full of journalists, among others, who are trying to figure out how to tell that story, what the indicators are, what the measures are. not to explain the newtown gooder, but to try to be watchdogs of our social safety net, whether in connecticut or anywhere else. from your point of view, from your experience as a clinician, where should the journalists in this room or on the live stream be looking in order to begin to investigate whether a mental health and other social safety- related areas we are doing as job--we are doing as good a job as we can? >> i think one of the things the principle of newtown high school mentioned was the psychiatrist mentioning their,

he is working on building resiliency with kids. i think that is an interesting and compelling story. he has been in uganda and helped with victims suffering traumatic experiences there. on communitying connections and community resilience are going to be an interesting part, and it is those people who fall through the safety nets, so to speak, if you consider that a safety net, that are perhaps the red flags that earlier we were asked to call upon. challenge, though, in journalism, i agree, it is not sexy, so who is going to beat it? >> but they are the pros here. they will get people to read it. , you, quick question

mentioned terrorism before. i wondered if the panel could share their thoughts about why some events are characterized as to terrorist attacks while some perpetrators are characterized as terrorists, like in the boston bombing for example, whereas in mass shootings they are not classified or defined as terrorists or terrorist attacks. who makes that decision and how does it affect coverage? >> anyone? >> i think from my perspective, isis etiology -- it ideology. if the ideology is political or religious in nature, than they are defined as a terrorist, but if it is personal, then it is a mass shooting. so i see that, but that is not a scientific decision. that is a cultural, that is a societal decision. they may have the same brains,

but different motives for different reasons. so i feel strongly about characterizing this incident as a form of domestic terrorism. i personally see it that way. we would not be sitting here today talking about this if it were one child or one teacher. the fact that it has created such a huge amount of potential -- attention in the press to me defines terrorism. the attention that it drawls. -- again it is speculation, but i believe that was intentional. one does not choose to do that without understanding what will happen as a consequence. , was there any internal debate at the current about whether to apply terrorism as an active to this,

as it were to this, a noun rather? >> none that i am aware of. >> but i think the thing that we need to remember, isn't it interesting there is all of this writing we have been told about that adam left behind. it will be interesting to see what he said in those journals and perhaps maybe we will learn more about him in terms of the word terrorism. it is not just the press response in dealing with terror. it is also how schools and towns have reacted, too. it is a good question because schools now are doing lockdown drills across connecticut. some are considering hiring armed guards at their school. i guess it is a good question. .> some may go to intent was there an intent to create lasting fear? i think that is one of the key components of terrorism. in a nine/to assume

11 type of thing that was not, let's try to kill a couple thousand people, it was trusts -- it was let's try to damage society going forward. we don't know yet from sandy hook. i think the initial assumption was it was a troubled kid who said let's kill a lot of people. maybe we will know later, was he thinking about the lasting, and was he hoping to leave that impact in terms of what schools are now doing, what the legislators are now doing. from theke patrick republican newspaper. that labeling crazy or mental illness, using that as an answer to why someone did something like what happened in newtown, tends to stop the questioning. people say, ok, he was crazy, there is his picture, he is crazy, and we have our solution.

journalists, i think because we are human, look for that answer, two, and we also tend to perhaps people turn to us for the answers and we provided for them. ok, there he was coming he had mental illness. how do we approach as journalists, folks like yourself, in a way that would keep the line of questioning open? how do we refrain from using , looking for that immediate answer? and is there a way that we as journalists can approach folks like yourself to keep that line of questioning open and keep the dialogue more positive? does that make sense question mark -- is that make sense? >> when you start asking thehiatrist questions, supposition is he must be mentally bill, which is why i am interviewing a sick i as opposed to an fbi agent or somebody

else. people withrlier, mental illness commit crimes all the time for the same motives that we see other people commit crimes. just because one has a mental illness does not explain the motives behind their act. so to open the conversation further, you need to explore further. one of the things that came out in the news was asked burgers. i cannot tell you how many lynches since -- how many clinicians got phone calls because their children had asked bergepergers. it is not a red flag. why it would be used in the press as a beion -- and why it would used in the press as did not follow the tip sheets on using

the press and a responsible manner. >> i think that was one of the things that some journalists wanted to try to clarify. remember, his medical reports have not been released. that is one of the issues with public access right now. i have talked to some prosecutors who have quietly said, let's release the report so we can see if and what if adam was something that was dealing with, what it is and if it had any type of effect on what happened. and those records still have not been released. i think to some degree, when something like this happens, there is this push for public access because we want to see if there is a record that may be reflects. maybe it won't ever tell the story, maybe it will give the explanation, but isn't it better to be armed with the most information so perhaps there is an avenue to explore that might have answered a few more questions? i was wondering, dr., how do

you feel when those reports come out? do you think it is important for the public to see ada's medical reports? >> i am not sure that it will answer the questions we are looking for. suppose he wasd, seen and he was found to be depressed. would that explain why he did what he did? young men who are depressed are often angry. and they express their depression in that type of situation. i think that is a fast silence facile think that is a answer into my mind it will do more damage damage to those who struggle with depression and it will not explain exactly what motivated him to do what he did. so i think the reason why records have not been released has to do with hipa.

some are not sure, given that he is deceased, that those records will ever be released. i don't know that for a fact. probably it will get sorted out in the course. but i am not sure it wants the questions. >> on the next panel we will have dave cohan, who spent a decade looking at columbine, including the mental health histories of the perpetrators, and we will see where the conversation leads. one more question? brad, photojournalist, freelance from connecticut. first of all, i want to say that it is really commendable that you guys do the frontline story. the reason for that is journalism suffers from a thing that most american companies don't suffer from, and that his tireless self-promotion. one of the problems with journalism, from an observer's point of view, is that you don't explain enough what you're

doing and how you do it, but more important he why you do it. it has a huge functioning democracy and getting people to understand. having said that, i have a son who has aspergers, so i panicked as i know everybody else did, but i know my son really well. but it also speaks to something that you brought up, and that is if the fbi could not know about the guys in boston, saying i was wondering is how could you even have your son, if you thought he was violent, hand him a gun? she never even thought it was possible for him to be violent. otherwise, why would she go target practicing with him? but that also speaks to something we need to do a little more of, which is self- way to make a ourselves better, improve the profession. is the of those things

problem with some of the journalism, as well as psychiatry, is we tend to look at these things as being the look at these two being the solution, where they are limited. you cannot always be thorough. we're trying to advance both of those things come at at a time when we look to doctors. pinging journalism 35 years, i found that we know about maybe 10% of what is going on in government, or maybe we got to the tip of the iceberg of the criminal justice system or what is going on with criminals or corruption. we rarely get to the bottom of any of that stuff. we're talking about limitations. psychiatry is not a panacea for everything coming in journalism does not explain everything. we are lucky if we can explain anything. those are just some, it's i wanted to put out there. what i said, with my son, i was thinking the same thing. but it also brings up something really important if i was doing research in psychiatry, and

that is there is a bigger issue here of fitting in, and that that is an american thing. it is probably the same in all societies, but even bigger societies, and that is if you reach the age of 19 or 20 and you have no place to fit in, then you are not part of this. whether it is immigrants coming in or a young man who has aspergers or autism. if you don't fit in, where do you d fit in the rest of your life question mark and does that make you angry enough? these are just observations, but as a journalist and father, something i have done here as a resident of connecticut. >> the broad philosophical is probably a good book in for going deeper. any closing stock thoughts -- any closing thoughts, either to brad or anything else question mark -- or anything else?

>> you give psychiatry too much credit. and this gets back to the question, if you identify those kids early on who are not fitting in, you can get to know them better and help them to find a community to fit into. or get them a job as a reporter. >> exactly. >> picking up on what you said about the profession not doing a good job explaining what it does, i have been thinking of late that we sort of need to rethink the role of journalists, not remake the role, but rethink the perception of the role of journalists. there were two things that led me to this. i was watching right after the bombing in boston, i was in florida, the back of the car, looking at the video on my iphone, and right after the blast there appeared to be a professional photojournalist,

based on where he was, a videographer sort of very quickly moving towards the blast. within 30 seconds or so, a police officer shooed him away. i thought, what a stupid idea that was. you have a very active crime scene. you have somebody capturing it professionally, and you are going to shut him down, or she, as a member of the media. that struck me as odd. i was on a panel a few weeks ago, the connecticut elite newspaper association, and somebody asked, did we really need to have that many journalists in newtown? couldn't we short of -- couldn't we sort of cut them a little break there? they didn't need that many satellite trucks. i thought about that and the impact on the town. i imagine the scene at the firehouse immediately afterward, these terrified parents and ofldren, and eu had scores police officers there with semiautomatic, fully automatic weapons, unknown numbers of

police cars, helicopters in the sky, and all of that must have been scary and dramatic. do webody would say, really need that many cops on the scene? could you put the helicopters away into the kids don't have to see it? understood the police officers had a role to play there. i make a modest proposal that in a tragedy like this, the media has a role to play as well, and it is an unpleasant role and sometimes difficult role and a role that will upset people, but i put this modest proposal out there that journalists ought to be seen to some extent as first responders as well. it is not purely a voyeur wristed thing. clearly there are people that we know all over the world who had deep and authentic concern for

the people of sandy hook and what had happened there, and also people, as was the case in boston, who needed information about what was going on there. the media played a pivotal role in that. so that will be my final rant on it, that it may be time to rethink and do our part as well, but to respect the role of journalists in covering a mass tragedy and think of us as sort of another essential first responder with a difficult job to do. , by way ofme say closing because we are out of matt andy lane, you can watch them doing their job, kind of a public explanation of the work of the reporters in the aftermath of sandy hook, at the frontline website and that the current website as well. the sandy hook documentary that features u2 is there. -- the sandy hook documentary

that features you two is there. this has set off some huge themes that will resonate in our next panel on where the story goes from here. let's take 15 minutes, come back, and we will take it from there. thanks, guys. [applause] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2013] >> the national rifle association held its annual meeting today in houston, texas. we will show you some of the featured speakers, including the nra ceo wayne lop ear, and the chief lobbyist tonight at 8:00 35 eastern -- tonight at 8:35 eastern on c-span. the u.s. economy created 160 5000 jobs in april, pushing unemployment unemployment to its lowest level since late 2008.

here to discuss the latest jobs numbers is the washington post financial reporter ylan mui. tell us about the reaction you saw yesterday from washington and wall street on these numbers. are they about what folks were expecting? they were significantly better than what people were expecting, and there was relief in the numbers. we have seen the economic data the past month has coming in weaker than people wanted to see. certainly the march jobs number originally was said to be 88,000 jobs created in the month of march, and that is nowhere near the level that we need in the water to see the recovery really take off. host: and that caused concern at that time. numbersxactly, and the released yesterday were really a sign the recovery is still chugging along. sort of going along, but even though it is not at the level that we would like to see yet, what we saw yesterday was

100 65,000 jobs created in the month of april, but also the revised figures in the previous two months, which was just as important. february jobs were now over 330 ,000 jobs created, and the month of april is looking better. significantly better in a sign the recovery stall chugging along. here is a blog post yesterday from alan krueger, the chairman of the white house council of economic advisers. he writes, "while more work remains to be done, today's employment report revives further evidence that the u.s. economy is continuing to recover from the worst downturn since the great depression." administration stresses every month, the monthly employment and unemployment figures can be volatile and payroll employment estimates can be subject to substantial revision. therefore it is important not to read too much into anyone monthly report and it is

informative to consider each report in the context of other data that are becoming available." he is encouraging us to look at the longer-term picture. give us how this hashes with everything else we have seen the past double years. guest: these are one month .umber numbers they get revised several times, not just once but twice. there is always the caveat. that said, the number that comes out every month, the first friday every month, is still hugely important, both politically and for the economy. major decisions are made on what that number looks like it is going to be. there are two sides of that coin. when you look at a long-term picture, though, for where jobs are going, right now we are in a spot where things are actually looking a little better. since the beginning of the year, i have found job growth of about 200,000 per month, and that

barrier is really important because that needs to be created in order to see significant reductions in the unemployment rate and make sure the recovery will be up to one day be self-sustaining. that 200,000 per month figure is really important. major decisions are being made on what that averages. showingre is a chart the private sector payroll showing private sector payroll employment, the big change here going from jobs lost two jobs gained coming in the spring. talk about the idea of a spring slump. what is the spring slump and what have we seen in the past years? there was a lot of momentum that seems to be developing over the winter that

dissipates by the time spring arrives. this is a pattern that we have seen in the jobs data over the past two years. either you see a lot of activity, construction, manufacturing going strong, but somehow something happens when you get to march, april, may where those numbers start to decline again. were in thatt we same pattern this year, but when we saw the march numbers, people said this could be indicative of the fact the economy is slowing down. in addition to the march data, you also had the threat of the sequester looming, and people said this will certainly slow the economy. data seems to sort of show the private sector can actually shake off any headwinds that are coming from washington. where you are around the country. host: we want to get your sense of where we are on the phone lines.

give us a phone call. we want to hear about your situation, in reaction to this job report. those numbers are up on the screen and the phone lines are open. we want to hear host: the phone lines are open now. talk about the market reaction and reaction on wall street. guest: markets were buoyant yesterday. you saw significant rises in both the dow and s&p, very shortly after the markets opened. the dow actually went above a psychological barrier of 15,000 for the first time. the dow has closed at a record high 15 times so far this year. we are certainly seeing investors cheering this news.

again, markets trade on expectations. even though the number is 165,000, because it was better than expected, because the revisions were so significant, that is why you saw a stock market rally yesterday -- yesterday. the s&p reached a record high, about 1600 for the first time. host: each job sector has its own story to tell. pull out a few of the sectors. we will show you the numbers on the screen one place that remained unchanged was manufacturing. perhaps you can start in the manufacturing manufacturing sector and tell us what is going on there. see manufacturing being one of the bright spots of the recovery earlier on. the recovery has now been five years -- it has gone through

many stages -- manufacturing is one sector that helped us early on. now you are starting to see that switch over to construction being one of the areas that is providing a lot of job growth. april was an anomaly. you saw manufacturing flat when. you suck construction actually shed about 6000 jobs. actuallynstruction shed about 6000 jobs. what are the types of jobs that are coming back? we see professional services come back in a big way. those tend to be white color, higher paid jobs. highere-collar, paid jobs. the question is, what happens to jobs in the middle/ -- middle? using construction jobs return for the first time in a very seentime -- you have construction jobs return for the first time in a very long time. host: we are taking your

thoughts. we want to see what is going on in your part of the country. we will start with our guest in indianapolis, indiana on our unemployed line. thanks for joining us. i have been employed for many years. i am in the middle sector. i have customer service, managerial experience. it has basically been like a dead field. , was trying in different areas trying to go through different labor department's. there are the technology jobs. there are really not any jobs for the middle, like she was saying. it used to be that i could get a doingr $10 or $11 customer service. those jobs are obsolete. they are either seven dollars or $25. there is no in between in indiana at the moment.

host: can you talk little bit about that situation, ylan mui? guest: she got to the idea of job polarization. job growth happening at the high-end, high paid, high skills, and the low end of the spectrum -- not so much in the middle. economist have been debating what that means, whether or not our economy has fundamentally changed, such that a lot of the jobs we lost are in a recession may or may not ever come back. if the economy has changed in a structural way, the response to how we help workers, our response to that will be very different than if the problem is something -- simply one of demand. goinghe economy gets again, more workers will be able to find jobs. is the problem cyclical come up a problem with demand, or a problem with skills mismatch? from let's go to rate

pennsylvania -- ray from pennsylvania. caller: its mediocre at best. there is the gas drilling that is going on in this state providing numerous jobs. said ministers against that but i want to ask about the unemployment rate at 7.5%. those people who have quit looking for work, they will drop off that number. the people who are on disability now, that number has doubled, almost 9 million people on disability -- those are unemployed. those are not included in the 7.5. all the new coins on welfare are not included in the 7.5. if y while regular

americans -- you are part of it. thosent to raise taxes on who are still working. host: she is a reporter with "the washington post." you could explain how these numbers are quantified and how they come up with these numbers. guest: i do not support cannot support the administration. he is right when he talks about the real number of the unemployed. the way the labor department measures the number of people out of work is very technical. in order to be considered technically unemployed, you have to be out of a job and have to have not looked for jobs within the past four weeks. that is a fuzzy measurement. some folks may be unemployed but

did look for work in the past four weeks but will look for work in the next four weeks. they're different categories of books marginally attached to the labour force who are discouraged workers who want a job but have given up looking because they feel there is nothing out there for them that add to a larger rank of the unemployed work force. issue witheen a real the number of people who are discouraged workers or who are marginally attached to the labour force or are long-term unemployed and when you add up those that is, the picture of unemployment becomes that much more grand. those workers who are on the edges of the labor force, those people will have the hardest time finding a job. one of the concerns that economists have is that blogger time you spend outside the labour force, the longer it takes to find a job, the more difficult it will be ander

networks begin to deteriorate and it becomes harder to bring you back in to make sure you have productive work you want to find. host: let me talk about employment targets and where the administration would like to be of this point. bernstein rights today in "the new york times."

how the obama maladministration want to get this employment rate to. >> their responsibility for achieving full employment rests with the administration. they want to create jobs. but it also rests with the federal reserve and that is where you really have seen unemployment targeting take place. i don't think there's anyone in the world who would say we don't want to see full employment. we don't want people who want a job not to have a job. the question is, what is full

employment and that is hotly debated. it is not clear exactly what that number would be. it is not zero. there will always be people in transition or not in the labour force. is it 5%? that is extraordinarily low. is it 5.5%? is it 6%? there is a big debate about that. the federal reserve has said its unemployment target is 6.5%. that is the number where it will say they will keep interest rates low until the economy had at least 6.5% unemployment. they may keep rights longer for lower than that but they will keep rates low until they had that number. until they get that level, you might start to see some sort of self sustaining virtuous cycle of recovery host: here is eight tweet --

phones inack to the st. petersburg, fla., on our unemployed line. caller: good morning, how are you? host: tell us about your situation. caller: first of all, let me say that what the last caller said about people being terrified. i resent that. i get medicaid. it is not enough. i am an american citizen. i grew up in st. petersburg all my life. back to what i really want to or is everybody who votes wants to vote knows all but government has to do is lower their own salaries. take cuts in their own salary and then the poor and homeless and hungry will not suffer from not having enough.

do you know what i mean? host: you think that will help you find a job in your situation? caller: i would love to be able to have a job but i have health issues that make it hard. i have a thyroid problem. it is a very slow thyroid. i have chronic fatigue. the doctors that we have here in florida that except medicaid or the bottom of the barrel. host: are you on long-term unemployed? caller: yes, but it is not as good as medicare. that's the problem. host: i want to talk about the long-term unemployment number. in april, that number declined 4 million.- the share of unemployment declined 2.2 percentage points

to 37.4%. interpret those numbers for us. guest: that is a good thing that there are more people coming out of the long-term unemployed. the hope is that those people are no longer long-term unemployed because they are actually finding jobs as opposed to dropping out of the labor force entirely. as the recovery picks up speed -- it will start to bring in these other people from the labour force, people who have been waiting in line belonged to find a job. that is an encouraging number. the number of discouraged workers, people who have given up looking for work, also fell. that is an encouraging sign. however, you get mixed signals and this economy and mixed results and we saw the number of people who are working part-time for economic reasons. -- they could only find part- time job and that number rose

by 250,000 in the month of april. people may be finding jobs but it is not the job they actually want. host: let's go to arthur from bath, indiana, on our retired line. caller: good morning, sir. behink the discussion would upgraded if we define what a job is. is awe are talking about lot of fractional jobs. a job is not a job until it pays the bills. it must modestly pay the bills and every free trade deal we have made has undermined industry and labour in this country. we've goto fix this, to fix this free-trade thing to we get a freere

shaken don't get the short end of the stick every time we make a free-trade deal. this is the crux of the matter. get better pay, you got to have skills and manufacture them. through free trade, we farmed out everything we have, apparently. it just does not work. what is the government going to -- that this is a future of a futile idea and get back to standing up for the citizens. every country in the world has gone down the tubes. the work force in every country is hurting because of this. the rich people just soar. host: the issue of jobs overseas

-- from twitter -- we will go to gabriel from lehigh acres in florida are employed line. caller: good morning. rate would have been 6.5% if our damn congressmen would work with the president. if we go back through history, that's how we moved out of the depression. laws are coming out of washington. has wanted to work on the problems and the lack of wealth of our politicians in congress is what has delayed the numbers. we are moving in the right direction, we are moving

forward. host: can you talk a little bit about what is going on on capitol hill to continue to push the job gains further? guest: the issue is that washington is not pushing job gains further. they are reducing the number of jobs. the caller has a good point that we have not talked about, about the tug of war between the public sector and the private sector. what you found is even and the public sector has been creating cuts in thegton job public sector have been a drag on growth. saw the number of employees in the public sector fell by 11,000. the seventh consecutive month of public-sector job declines we have seen. even as you see growth on one side, the other side is taking away that growth. meantime, you are facing

sequester and what that impact will be. they may come in the form of increased numbers of layoffs. it may come in the form of furloughs that decrease the number of hours that employees work. congressou slice it, looks at this affecting growth by about zero 0.5%. that is something that is significant. it is a drag on the economy. it is something that could delay that recovery until 2014. host: have expectations been made about how much loss we will see in the government sector because of sequester? guest: it is a very gray area of uncertainty. toterms of growth, cuts government spending had resulted in about zero 0.5% growth.

gdp in the fourth quarter was brought down last year. we have seen the impact of government cuts on the economy. what is not clear is how significant and how large a bay will be going forward. it depends on exactly how the sequestered plays out host: let's go to sharyl from fort atkinson, wisconsin who has stopped looking for work. tell us about your situation. caller: good morning, i became sick a few years ago. i cannot work. i am not collecting social security because they keep saying no so i am in that process. my husband is working. he is a chef and recently went them making $14 per hour to employer saying we have to cut wages. now he makes $10.50 per hours. the price of everything keeps going up.

then the federal reserve keeps monkeying around and printing more money which makes the cost of everything go even higher. all the policies they come up with, they are not helping us. they are helping the wealthy. their income is up but i think we are looking at a reset of how much people in america make. especially in the middle of the country, not in washington or new york. i have no answer. lord knows, they will not listen to me. reporter butderful do you ever actually leave the washington/new york area and come out here in the middle of the country? wages are not keeping up with the actual cost of living.

we have had to start using the credit card and god knows, i don't want to. host: you talk about the wage issue. guest: i was just in kansas city early this month so i do get outside of washington and i did talk to people. i will say that the issue of the long-term unemployed, the issue of wages is one that cannot be overstated for the country. the issue of wages in particular is one that is frustrating because what people are seeing is even if you find a job, is that the job you want, is the number of hours you want, is that the wage you want? wage raises have been virtually nonexistent for many different sectors. that is an issue because consumer spending drives 2/3 of the economy. if you find that folks are not seeing their wages grow and not seeing incomes increase, they will not spend as much money in order to support the economy and

support the demand. she also mentioned that the role of the federal reserve. we already mentioned the federal reserve targeted the unemployment rate of 6.5% to keep interest rates low. it is also doing quantitative easing and that means it is buying bonds, $85 billion of bonds each month, to try to bring long-term interest rates down as well. that will helpt increase demand for things like mortgages and it will help increase business investment demand. those things will support the economy but the fed has been criticized because the people who of houses and people getting mortgages are the people who tend to be better off so where does that leave the folks like the previous caller who are the ones at the bottom rung, trying to make ends meet. host: let's go to madison,

indiana, on our unemployed line, mike, go ahead. caller: thanks for taking my call, your show is great. i wish it was on later saw more people could hear it. the previous caller i agree with about obama trying to ease unemployment. one of his stance as when he was running for office was to bring jobs back from overseas. until those jobs come back, one of his stance as when he was running for office was to bring jobs back from overseas. until those jobs come back, they're not going to be any jobs. i am unemployed right now. i am drawing unemployment, thank god, it is not a lot but it helps. i'm struggling to keep but i've got. until the politicians get together -- it seems these guys could not legislate their way out of a paper bag right now. people need to read up on alec which would give them a light on the republican agenda.

the caller earlier called people drawing unemployment and drawing disability as parasites and the politicians, calling them entitlements, i have been paying into this since i was a young man and i and 58. -- i am 58 now. for these people to say they are entitlements, it is like things are backfiring on these politicians and it is time to pay up. these guys have got to get together on the legislation. guest: i think it is interesting that we have had a number of older callers saying that they are looking for a job or they would like more hours. one thing you see in this recession and recovery is that the number of people who are older workers have been increasing, we are finding that the people are working longer partly because they might be in

better health, medicine has allowed us to work longer than we used to be able to work. that is a good thing but people are also working longer because they are worried about their retirement and worry about having enough money to last them through the final days. you are finding more folks who might be older who are still looking for jobs, trying to fill in the labour force but finding a challenging because they are at that point in their careers. host: another number from the bureau of labor statistics is the average work week for employees and what this shows us.

explain what we are measuring here and why we do that? guest: we are measuring the length of the work week and it is helpful because sometimes, some folks work longer than 40 or less than 40. a smaller work week is not what we are looking for. it is not the direction we want to see things going. there could be a number of reasons behind this, like the increase in part-time work. the other reason could be as employers look at their staff and look at the labor force, they say we might not see the demand. instead of actually reducing the number of employees, we will handle this by simply cutting hours of the employees. people still have jobs but they're not working in the number of hours they want or in the type of jobs they want. this might be another area where you could see the sequester have an impact. if people are furloughed as

opposed to being laid off, you may see that manifest itself in that average work week number. there is several different places with details of the jobs report that you need to look at in order to get a fuller picture of where the labor market is headed. host: ylan mui is a reporter with "the washington post." in april, the unemployment rate dropped to 7.5%. we are getting your thoughts and your take on your employment situation in the areas where you are. let's go back to ohio, tom is on our employed line. caller: good morning, look at bangladesh. we've got our corporations, probably donald trump saying that the people in bangladesh need jobs.

they will charge that man with murder who owned that building. we need to start charging our investors, our ceo's for san in our jobs overseas. -- for sending our jobs overseas. host: what are you seeing in ohio? caller: you can get a job making $10 per hour but that is not money to live on. you cannot put 5% in your 401 - it is impossible. he talks about raising the minimum wage to $9. $10 per hour? 30 years ago -- people out here are making what they made 30 years ago. gasoline was 35 cents, a gallon of milk was 40 cents -- this is absolutely -- are congress, our senate, even the president are all run by money.

host: talk about what the caller brings up. guest: one thing that he mentioned that is interesting is the issue of flat wages. some of the calls have also -- prices.t raises. we have seen some factors of prices be very volatile like gasoline. it seems they are up and down. gasoline prices have been volatile. over all, inflation has actually remained fairly tame over the past few years. right now it's trending at about 1.1% which is one of the record lows. prices overall have not increased that significantly. the reason why that is important is because that allows the federal reserve to continue its policy. it has said it will continue to

buy bonds, pump money into the economy, keep interest rates low unless inflation gets out of control. out of control inflation is like 2.5%. if they see inflation rise above that level, they may put on the brakes. the federal reserve has seemed inappropriate to continue his policy and some members have argued for an increase in stimulus in order to break up inflation. we don't want to be in a deflationary environment. host: alan is from st. joseph, missouri, and has stopped looking. tell us your situation. caller: thank you for taking my call. ing my call. the number that they use for the unemployment is incorrect. the natural attrition rate is 150,000. in order to create one job, the

number has to be one of the 50,000 +/. illegal immigration is another problem. i am all in local 8 in kansas city and we have adopted a discrimination policy of workers 50 and older in order to bring in a undocumented workers into unions. for cheaper labor. that is an issue. around the gray economy and that is work that is done by people that are not on the books whether it be work that is done by people who are here illegally or work done on the side, somebody mowing the lawn and making a few extra dollars. it is hard to quantify the amount of activity that goes on in this great economy. it is very important to people. an area where you may see more people turning to as they find

it more difficult to have a formal job. what is a job? a job is something that -- is a just something that has benefits or work that is cobbled together that allows you to make a living? host: will turn to the front page of the business section of " the new york times."

i want to go back to the funds, rubin is waiting from kansas city, missouri on our unemployed line. caller: good morning. if they call themselves patriots, i don't understand have taken the patriots when they ship jobs out of their country to other countries. i want to know this -- who is the overseers of fair employment? community,-american the job rate is a tree in high. -- is extremely high. spanish-speaking people employed out there on job sites, construction jobs, street jobs, but i very seldom see african-americans working. we're the last people

hired and the first people fired and it seems that way now. -- who is number on working and how fair is the employment status? host: here are some numbers from the bureau of labor statistics reports that the matter yesterday. it breaks it down by working groups. seeing ist you're that the recovery is uneven. when you mention the unemployment rate for african- americans and whites, the rate for african-americans is more than double.

we go into the guts of the report and look at the details as to who is working and how long and how much. you will find there is on even this and in these numbers. those numbers are real people and real jobs. one issue for the african- american community is not only are they grappling with higher unemployment but they are also experiencing a greater loss of wealth during the recession that than other racial groups did. you are finding that because so much of their wealth was driven by the housing market, wrapped into their homes, when home prices plunged, it had a disproportionate impact on african americans. that is another thing they're struggling with at the same time they see unemployment rates be disproportionately high. host: this is james from new york, on our employed line. caller: good morning, right is putting aleahy

bill into immigration law that they say there is a lack of labor and dairy farms. was 220,000 dairy farms in the united states. in 2008, there was less than 35,000. at the same time, dairy slightly, increased right there there is a job loss. according to the census, it is about three employees per farm. host: can you talk a little about farm jobs? guest: that is not my area of expertise but what the caller speaks to is the polarization issue. you are seeing job growth cluster at the top end skilled said of the spectrum. some of these jobs in the middle

are becoming harder to come by. has: lake wales, fla. stopped looking for work, good morning. i live inod morning, rural county in central florida. old, i grew up with an agriculture based economy in florida. we are hit hard here. a master's degrees, in business administration, i have not been able to find a job in this area for the last six- seven years. there is $8 per hour jobs but that will not pay for the gas. toemocracy will continue exist until the time the voters discover they can vote themselves a generous gift from the probe -- public treasury. a majority vote always votes for the candidate that promises the most.

to me, it seems that we have showed so much complacency and it does not seem to be any substantial policy that will take us anywhere. it is just a bunch of theoretical discussion. i believe we have to have more firm policies and be willing to look at our democracy in a new way. as the economy continues to change. host: let's talk to joe from omaha, neb., on our unemployed line. caller: banks for accepting my call. accepting my call. i want to talk about efficiencies and the gang mentality. i am recently employed. i was unemployed not too long ago. getting assistance myself. when you speak to these people, it is telemarketers where there used to be workers. i tried to get an address to the

dentist's office because i knew it would be covered under the health care plan and they gave me the wrong address. i had to go to another one and get my eyes checked. they sent me to a place that would check my eyes but would not give the glasses. there are efficiency issues with the social programs that as part of the problem. i amr as gang mentality, really disgusted with the gang mentality in washington. it does not seem like republican or democrats have the best interest of our country at heart. they forgot that is the primary goal to look at the country. a democrat that might think something is good that falls outside the parameters of democratic policy is afraid to say it because he does not want to upset his people. last we want to give the comment on this segment of "the washington journal" talk about the outlook for jobs in the coming months. guest: it is better than we

thought it would be and the economy has more momentum headed into the sequester that we thought it would. that is good news. the bad news is that there is isll a drag and that weighing on the job market and the economy and it is pushing back this idea of a faster recovery. it pushes that idea back to 2014. >> on the next "washington journal," we will look at president obama's second term. followed by an update on the situation in syria. and then, national public radio joins us to talk about the new pbs series on the u.s. constitution and what it means in the 21st century.

live with your calls, tweets, and e-mails at 7:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. ronald reagan massively made mistakes on defense. the defense budget was not just a waste of money. it was what created the war machine that we have used to create so much havoc in the so much angerte and problems throughout the world that were totally unnecessary, that made us an imperial power. stand other hand, he did up for limiting the state. big government, the state is not the solution to every problem. it can way down the private economy. entrepreneurs, the

idea of technological change, the idea that people should make some own decisions without big nanny in washington, he stood for all those rings. i agree with those things. that puts the plus in his column. fiscally, he lost it. he needed to stand up for closing more of that deficit. ronald reagan spent a lifetime before 1980 as the greatest scourge opponents of deficit spending there ever was. he left a legacy of massive deficits which permitted his followers to say, reagan proved that deficits do not matter. more with david stockman sunday at 8:00 on c-span's q&a. >> next, president obama

delivers his weekly address from mexico city. then the republican address from north carolina governor pat mccoury, focusing on health care and energy policy at the state and local level. , everybody. i'm speaking to you from the road, a trip to mexico and coaster rica. -- costa rica. what in america represents an incredible opportunity for the united dates -- latin america represents an incredible opportunity for the united states. we learned that our businesses created another 165,000 jobs last month. 6.8 million new jobs over the past 38 months. i won't be satisfied until everyone who wants a job can find one. i'm going to keep doing everything i can and go everywhere i need to go to help our businesses created jobs.

one of the best ways to grow our economy is to sell more goods and services made in america to the rest of the world trade that includes our neighbors to the south. 40% of our exports go to the americas. those exports are going faster than our trade with the rest of the world. i'm working with leaders to deepen our economic ties and expand trade between our nations. in mexico, i talked about migration reform, an important issue that affects both our countries. our border with mexico is more secure than it has been in years. we put more boots on that border than at any time in our history. crossings are down more than 80% from their peak. but we have more to do. recent weeks, we have seen a commonsense immigration reform bill introduced in the senate. this bill is a compromise.

nobody got everything they wanted, including me. it is consistent with the principles i have wait out from the beginning. it would strengthen security at our borders, hold employers accountable, and provide a pathway to earn citizenship for the 11 million individuals already living in this country legally, and modernize our legal immigration system so we can reunite families and attract highly skilled entrepreneurs and engineers who will create jobs and grow our economy. these are all common sense steps that the majority of americans support. there is no reason that immigration reform cannot become a reality this year. in the meantime, i will keep working with our neighbors, our security, and prosperity. allions of americans earn living right now because of the trade between our nations. after this week, i am confident that we can build on our shared heritage and values to open more markets for american businesses and create more jobs for american workers.

thanks. have a great weekend. >> i'm pat mccoury, governor of north carolina. like you, when i look to washington, i see entrenched gridlock and immediate need for executive leadership. washington bears no resemblance to states where strong republican governors are using their leadership skills to improve the daily lives of their citizens. here in north carolina, we are concentrating on reforms in three fundamental areas, the economy, education, and efficiency. january,ook office in putting people back to work has been our top priority. because of a stagnant national economy and ineffective policies of the past, private sector growth has been at a standstill. creation moving again, we launched the partnership for prosperity, an

initiative that will provide a central point of contact for business. the private sector posse ground- floor involvement is critical to this new venture -- sector's ground-floor involvement is critical to this new venture. it will allow us to cut red tape and respond to the needs of job creators. to open andnesses expand is only half the job. that is where education comes in. employers need a job ready who have technical skills that are mandatory in today's workplace. too often, employers tell me they can't find qualified applicants. thepplicants to close skills gap. my budget prioritizes engineering, vocational and technical training, areas where there is immediate demand for qualified workers. i have also been asked, how can

we start new initiatives without asking the taxpayers for more money? the answer is, efficiency. here's what i mean. today smartphones are much more efficient and cost effective than earlier models of mobile phones. there is no reason why government can't be as customer friendly and cost-effective as a smartphone. optimally, interacting with government should be as easy as checking the latest scores on the internet or even shopping online. unfortunately, there are only so many innovations that states can create on their own. in issues such as health care and energy, we need washington to grant us independence and flexibility. for instance, we are working on an innovative reform for medicaid. it centers on the patient's well-being, not just their

physical needs, but mental health, substance abuse, and other social service needs that will be covered so that we can get patients healthier sooner and away from emergency rooms, where the most expensive form of healthcare is delivered. to implement this holistic ,pproach, we will need a waiver permission from the white house essentially. i hope the president and i urge the president approves this unconventional but commonsense reform so that we can take care of our medicaid patients in a caring, comprehensive manner. while at the same time reducing .alls -- cost to the taxpayer the president needs to grant governors the ability to develop energy resources on our lands and off our shores. in february, i personally asked president obama directly to expand offshore leasing off the coast of virginia, north carolina, and south carolina.

issue needs more study. with all due respect, mr. president, the time for study is over. it's time to get off the sidelines and allow the states to exert the leadership that will create thousands of jobs, reduce america posta dependence on middle eastern oil, -- am erica's dependence on middle eastern oil. medicaid reform and energy are two issues where republican governors are exerting visionary leadership. i join the president to join us in north carolina, where we are working to make government a partner, not an adversary. working together, we can get this nation back on the right track by simply unleashing the unlimited potential of the american people. this formula has worked before, and i guarantee it will work again. finally, i invite people across the nation to visit north carolina as we make our state a

great place to live, work, and raise a family. thank you for listing. god bless the united states of america. the intelligentsia is driven by this certainty that religion and reason are in different boxes, that science and religion are in different boxes, and the two are at war with each other. someone who is rational is not religious, someone religious is not rational. science is the antidote to religion. science is rational. this itself is the ultimate irrational idea, because the belief that religion is inimical to science in the west is completely untrue. religion underpinned science and reason. yourlanie phillips takes calls, e-mails, facebook

comments and tweets in depth, three hours, live sunday at noon eastern on book tv. c-span2. tomresident obama nominated wheeler to be the next chair of the federal communications commission. this is our topic on "the communicators." tom wheeler is managing director of core capital partners, which is his venture capital firm. twoas been the ceo of industry groups based here in washington. the cable association and the wireless association as well. joining us to discuss this, telemedia policy, and he is the former republican counsel to the house energy and commerce committee, and blair levin with the aspen institute who has served several stints at the ftcc. andou know tom wheeler,

what should people who follow these issues know about tom wheeler? >> i do know tom wheeler. he was a very successful .nvestor between the trade association stints and after he left the wireless industry as well. the two things i will say, he has a breadth of experience on both the policy side and the investment side that is extremely valuable. the second thing often overlooked, he is actually managed some large organizations -- has actually managed some large organizations, to work together to develop and implement policy, analyze things. i think he will be good at that. >> justin lilley? >> i knew tom a little bit as well.